Do you see no mystery, no romance,
no wondering what it is all about,
in science?

Does every probability
Exist or only what we see?
There’s mystery!

We and our fellow-creatures
Are made of the stuff of distant stars,
That’s romance.

– Wendy Shutler

The furthest reaches of the mysteries surrounding some of the deep questions of life may be beyond our ken to answer at present but science is peeling back some of the outlying shrouds.

Why take a cue from the behaviour-pattern that is said to typify the Ostridge?  We should consider all the new evidence that comes to light.  Light arguably is shed on aspects of our belief systems by scientific discoveries. If so, what is their possible significance?

There are several scientists or former scientists who take the view that spirituality and an understanding of th human condition can be based on scientific findings.  References to some of these teachers are on the ‘Links’ page of this website under both ‘Spiritual Matters’ and ‘Science’ but what exactly is the science that propels us in this direction; how certain is it?  Truth – be it of the nature of the world, or Nirvana, outer space, or numbers etc – is rarely understood by gazing at equations or considering entities such as quarks or neutrons.   They can carry someone originating a theory part of the way but fuller realisation can come in a ‘Eureka’ moment.  It is rare that a new Big Idea finds instant universal acceptance or acclaim but it behoves us to keep an open mind about some of the thinking that has been going on by people who know their science.   Hypotheses based on evidence may fall short of proofs as needed in a court room or a laboratory but may be allowable pro tem even if the jury is still out.  Not all scientific experimentation or the conclusions drawn from it stack up but earnest, expert experiments to try to tease out deep meanings deserve an open-minded hearing.

What do the findings, or some of the findings, tell us about the significance of our beliefs?

What exactly are the findings in modern science that may have these far-reaching effects on our perception of our place in the cosmos?

Below are some of the questions in this context:

  • In what way if any are we connected to everything around us?
  • Can there be communication perhaps at a distance ‘remotely’ between people and/or other entities?  If so, by what means might it be conducted if not by language?
  • is there a fundamental animating spirit in our biological make-up? If so, what might this animating spirit be?
  • What kind of universe is it that we are in?
  • If man is not the architect of himself, does this imply that there is another ‘architect’?   If so, what deductions about ‘it’ does rigorous conjecture lead?
  • We come from the stars; is our composition or consciousness different in kind from what is in the cosmos; if so why should this be the case?
  • Do the recent revelations about the workings of the human body including its sub-atomic parts have a relevance to what and who we are and, if so, what is it?
  • What do discoveries about the natural world have to tell us about ourselves?
  • What Is the connection between consciousness and quantum physics?
  • Can human biology be physically changed by human intention?  If so, how?

The Brain of Einstein

Einstein’s brain was preserved after his death in 1955, but this fact was not revealed until 1978.

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A snapshot of Brian Mayne’s thinking about the ‘presence’ that underlies our essence

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A snapshot of Brian Mayne’s thinking about the ‘presence’ that underlies our essence

An example of intellectual reflection brought to bear on ruminative reflection

Reflection Represented in Figurine Form

What can we be sure of?

Review: Ghosts and Hauntings by Dennis Bardens

The Underlying Approach to Reflection

Driifloat

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Review: Rupert Sheldrake – Morphic Resonance

Benjamin Casteillo Personal Revelations

Review: Your Brain is Boss by Dr Lynda Shaw

Reflection: its practical purposes

External Links

A snapshot of Brian Mayne’s thinking about the ‘presence’ that underlies our essence

When does individuality (sense of separate beingness) start and do we ever lose the oneness we were prior to that?

The individual side of us originally did not exist. Who and where were we as individuals in, say, 1949? Even after birth, it still took some time for the intelligent awareness that we were to learn and acquire, the identifications and preferences – what we call personality and ego. So, we entered as forms associated with an essential awareness (which almost certainly in that oneness pre-existed any physical birth). Later all else was acquired/learned from outside of us, including all the ‘me, my and mine.’ The newborn infant had no ‘me, my and mine’ but did have intelligent awareness. As it grew and developed what we call mind/ego, it increasingly identified with the learning it acquired from external sources and forgot its essential Self – but that Self is always present – like the life force – as we could not exist without its foundation.

Much of the resolution of this, for me, comes with the awareness of my state when transitioning from sleep (not yet conscious of any personhood) to waking. In that often too brief in-between state, before remembering who I am, where I am or the when of things, there is a clarity of just awareness being present AND being aware or conscious of it (which I was not during sleep – but can be more and more with practice). This awareness of awareness does not happen through physical senses – does not belong to the realm of time and space. That same awareness WAS present during sleep, but just not noticed.

Part of what is becoming increasingly evident to me is that this conscious awareness is not personal, not mine. It is the same awareness shared by all, just as all share the life force. It IS the oneness. I’ve just been imagining it belonged to me. Also, this awareness is actually ALWAYS present but not noticed in our daily life when our attention is pulled outward to so many other objective phenomena including thoughts. It is my sense of what Roy means by presence and also that something about him that never changes.

For those interested in this subject, Brian recommends the work of DAVID BINGHAM: ‘We are already the infinite Being and always have been.’
Visit http://www.nonconceptualawareness.com/

An example of intellectual reflection brought to bear on ruminative reflection

Rumination, here, begins with a contemplation of the immensity of the universe. It is a subject whose interest-value arguably is fuelled more by curiosity than by the different types of emotion that can pump up reflection, whether intellectual or ruminative.

There is the vastness of the cosmos. And there is me, titchy by comparison. But am I not a world unto myself? There are billions almost without number of cells in my body as there are the planets in the universe, more even, incredibly so, say some scientists. Neuron infrastructure and the rest of what is in our bodies vies in complexity with what is in Space. A planet ‘to itself’ may be vast and so too, myself. Are there two ways of seeing the situation, neither exclusive? Is it all according to perspective?

‘Ruminative reflection’ can go on to follow this path: Perhaps, as often said these days, our intuitions bespeak our being in touch with a form of higher consciousness? We come from the stars. Is the cosmos comparable to a human being and, if we want to understand the cosmos, is it in any way a feasible idea to start by looking at, and inside, ourselves, as much as by training the Webb Space Telescope at the heavens? Just perhaps, something in our origins and our innate being may have their parallel in the universe and its formation? Speculation perhaps, and more will follow, but…

Then comes intellectual reflection, which is very different. We are curious about the data, What of the facts on which we can base our thinking? Aristotle was among the first to see that we should bring common sense beliefs to look at a topic and tidy up evidence about the data.

We are reliant on the hard work of brilliant people to know as much as we think we do about the cosmos. These by enlarge are not ideas that we could think up unaided for ourselves. How do we know - if not following astrophysics - that the moon is 238.555 miles away? The earth may not be flat ‘as a pancake’ given the mountain ranges but do we check it out, ruler in hand?

What do we make of what we are told about the mind-blowing phenomena in Space? Do some things seem odd in the current view of the Cosmos? If so, what are they?

The scientific community is venerated. Do we dare raise an eyebrow at some of its theories? Genius at experiment and marvels of technology involve separate exercises from making deductions on the findings. Scientists particularly may be fascinated by what they discover, true, but even they often aren’t of one mind.

Curiosity awakened, we can consult, for instance, an impressive tour d’horizon in ‘New Scientist’s Essential guide to TIME: Adventures in the fourth dimension’ (Guide No 19, a wonderful summation of impressive work done about this frontier of discovery.

We can think for ourselves. Pack for this magical mystery tour of ‘intellectual reflection’ John Thorn’s advice to ‘show a healthy disrespect for the printed word’ - and perhaps a flask of brandy.

Did Einstein say this given the deniable fact that 92.5% of all statistics are invented at the time of utterance, including this one?’ writes Dan Remenyl.

Western philosophers were very sceptical about intuition as a means to acquire knowledge or to use it as a form of philosophical debate given that it did not appear to have sufficient objectivity. Bergson who made it a central platform of his philosophy changed philosophy for a while and was considered an important philosopher for about 10 years. Then his star fell and the same distrust came about. Recently again he has been going through a Renaissance especially amongst French thinkers.’, writes Nigel Jackson.

Those wishing to pursue the following subject should consult scientific tracts.


PROPOSITION A: THE BIG BANG

The Big Bang is thought to be the start of time and of space. In the beginning, it exploded out of nothing then rapidly expanded… When our space-time was less than a second old, this expansion accelerated faster than the speed of light of cosmic acceleration for a very brief moment, a percentage of a second with 40 zeros after the decimal, an exponential rate of increase (with mould on a loaf, what is a little bit because a lot very quickly)…The early universe can be tested by deciphering the cosmic microwave background radiation, the flood of light released 380,000 years after the Big Bang…The only thing that can violate the universal speed limit is space-time. (ibid).

QUERIES ON PROPOSITION A:

  • Something surely must have been there before that starting point even if we do not know what it was. To quote Shakespeare in King Lear: ‘Nothing can come out of nothing!’
  • If space-time isn’t entirely understood, how do we know that it can’t violate universal speed?
  • A dissentient scientist: ‘Paul Steinhardt replaces the big bang with a big bounce and a cyclic universe.’ (ibid)
  • A percentage of a second with 40 zeros after the decimal? That seems to be of an accuracy so extraordinary that one would feel more confident in the statistic if the word ‘estimated’ was added? The magnitude of the power exuded in such a minute fraction of time is so mind-bogging that one might be inclined to think it is entirely beyond present human comprehension
  • The testing of the early universe as described above is indubitably a highly impressive exercise. How much of the multifarious features that must have characterised the early universe can be deduced from this observation?

PROPOSITION B: TIME DILATION

Bob sets up 2 pulses of lift to each end of the carriage. What he sees is that they hit the walls simultaneously, but this is not what Alice - an observer affected by the fact that the train has moved forward - sees from the platform.

If observers who move relative to one another cannot agree on the simultaneity of events they cannot agree on the measurement of time.

Exposition: What we think is that we are stationary but in reality we are all compared to an observer outside the planet… To Alice, the light-pulse travels a longer path than if the train is stationery. The speed of light is a constant so the time taken for one tick of the moving clock of Bob is longer according to Alice. According to Relativity Bob can make the same calculation but he regards the train as at rest – so he infers that the clock on the platform is running slow. The readings of the clocks ‘at the same instant’ can’t be compared until we decide what the same instant means; Bob and Alice think differently about it.

Example of testing: Christian Lisdat of the National Metrology Institute of Germany put a strontium atomic clock on a moving trailer with rubber dampers to mitigate (is that enough?) vibrations, climate control to stabiilise temperature, and measurements were taken in French mountains and in low-lying Turin. A year in the Alps was shown to be 84 nanoseconds longer in Turin. Tobias Boulder in 2023 in Colorado stacked hundreds of thousands of strontium atoms in a vertical stack I

QUERIES ON PROPOSITION B:

  • The measurement of time, is surely what scientists can’t agree on, not time itself.
  • Is the acid test of whether or not a thing exists is that ‘it can be measured’? One cannot accurately measure for instance an emotion but it may exist.
  • The variation in speed may result from earth-bound factors not galactic ones?

PROPOSITION C: COSMOLOGICAL TIME DILATION

Time seems to have ticked more slowly when the universe was young. Light from ancient cosmic events travel increasingly longer distances to reach earth. Those events seem to unfold more slowly than an event here and now. Anyone around at the start would have seen time evolving normally

Exposition: Around 7 billion years ago an event appears to evolve at 60% of the speed we see today. In 2023 Geraint Lewis at Sydney University … detected a more extreme version earlier. They looked at 190 quasars, (objects at the centre of some galaxies - a supermassive black hole surrounded by a disc of hot plasma that spits out high energy particles) … The earliest quasar about 1 billion years after the start of the universe appears to run five times more slowly that quasars from today.

QUERIES ON PROPOSITION C:

  • The speed of time in these examples ‘appears’ to us to be running more slowly but this may only be a consequence of our particular vantage point.
  • Why is the speed of the quasar/s at the start of the universe said to be the same as that of subsequent quasars? It is a good hypothesis, not more.
  • If time was ‘evolving normally’ at the start, does this beg the whole question?
  • This is the tiniest of tiny differences. Need a tiny wrinkle like this affect the overall picture save in an academic sense?

PROPOSITION D: PERCEIVING TIME

Most of us can estimate time passing with amazing precision thanks to a complex network of neural mechanisms; perhaps we even create the arrow of time in our heads. Our bodies keep track of time unconsciously too – which contributes to our perception of time slowing down or speeding up

Exposition: In the absence of clocks, schedules or calendars our bodies still march to the beat of internal timekeepers called circadian (in the suprachiasmatic nucleus which relies on pendulum-like oscillations inside proteins to keep us in synch with the sun rhythms.) A connection to the spinning of earth on its axis that ensure that biological processes occur at the right time of day or night. Various organs work optimally at certain times, the way we respond to medicines etc – are our bodies operating in time with the physical world. Light hits specialised cells on the retinas of our eyes that send signals about the time of day to a master clock in the brain – it regulates a multitude of clocks in cells and organs throughout the body. ‘Place cells’ mark where in a spatial environment an animal is. If an animal walks in a linear tunnel, place cells fire in a linear line. Time cells do something similar but for the passage of time. At an event, ie a dinner party or movie, the brain recognises this as a specific or notable chunk of time, what neuroscientists call an ‘episode’. The subjective experience of time may depend on how many episodes one is creating.

To track the passing of time we may also need ‘ramping cells.’ Time cells wait till it is their turn to fire, a ramping cell will fire intensely to mark the beginning of an episode, then gradually slow down. So…the brain combines information from place cells about where an event is happening and sensory information about what is going on…then add in the time and ramping cell activity, and the brain puts all the information into the appropriate time frame. It’s packaged into episodic memories and stored allowing us to perceive the temporal order of our lives.
But there may be other rhythms. Theta rhythms – waves of brain activity that oscillate at around 4 to 8 hertz – may timestamp activities, depending on where within the wave they occur…there is one model proposed in which theta oscillations are happening in multiple places in the hippocampus and where other neurons fire relative to this wave. Some researchers believe that the brain can tell time without time and ramping cells.

QUERIES ON PROPOSITION D:

  • This all seems an excellent way of mapping what is going on in our bodies and their extraordinary complexity. Is there an overriding query about whether all this fundamentally ‘explains’ what is going on? Are the above factors the result of something else? For instance, is there an actuating spirit in each of us? Are the above-given factors the physiological markings of this?
  • ‘In synch with the sun’ – why is it in synch with just the sun? Surely this internal time clock, assuming it exists as an independent variable, is in synch with other cosmological bodies?
  • An observation: ‘A ramping cell will fire intensely to mark the beginning of an episode, then gradually slow down.’ If we come from the stars, is the above-described process comparable to the order of the universe speeding up exponentially?
  • The range of possible, seemingly contradictory explanations given implies that each explanation must remain for the time being as only a hypothesis.
  • An animal - examples are given - may perceive time as passing at a different rate from human beings. Insects can live for just a day, a lifetime for them. Time being perceived by man in a way that suits man can be understood as having a subjective dimension on grounds of common sense.

PROPOSITION E: CAUSE AND EFFECT IN THE QUANTUM REALM

The lack of straightforward cause and effect in the quantum mechanical world muddles our understanding of how time works in the smallest realm.
Predicting the way a glass will shatter is easier than the process in reverse. Can objects be in two different states at the same time? Cause and effect doesn’t exist in the Quantum world; an object can be in two separate states at the same time.
Exposition: Quantum superposition (is defined) as an object being in two different states at the same time… In 2012 it was proposed that the temporal sequence of two events, just like the positions of a particle or the path it took, could also exist in superposition. Thus the arrow of time could have abrupt kinks in its trajectory. A Viennese University professor, Herr Walther, saw a photon pass through two gates, A & B, but it was impossible to tell which it went through first. This might hold true for causality. The idea that the present can influence the past is ‘retrocausality’ – follows from superposition
General Relativity doesn’t sit easily with quantum mechanics. General Relativity is a set of equations that describe the way classical objects are affected by gravity. The 3 dimensions of space and the 4th dimension of space are part of the same entity, woven into pace-time. Hence space-time bends around large masses. Time slows down when objects move close to the speed of light. Anything that concerns the dynamics of things larger than an individual particle.
Quantum mechanics by contrast shows that atoms and sub-atomic particles are governed by the other three fundamental forces of nature, the electromagnetic force and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Partciles can appear to be in two places at the same time, information passing between them even though they may be separated by large distances.
Particles can seem affected by events that happen in their future.

QUERIES ON PROPOSITION E:

  • An observation: Retro-causality: the present can influence the past. It opens up an area of speculation that is hardly touched on in this account. It may be a way of explaining the circularity of time and the hypothesis mentioned above that surprising things that one felt keenly at an early phase of one’s life may hove into significance in the light of subsequent events.
  • What might be true of the smallest realms doesn’t necessarily make it true of all other realms? Why because an observation happens at a nano-level does it have to hold good at a cosmic scale level? Why must there be just one such law governing all creation?
  • This is of relevance to the ‘Schrodinger’s Cat’ conundrum (the mere fact of inspecting whether a cat inside a sealed box is dead or alive can alter its fate). The observer interferes with the observed. This may be logical given the results of ‘entanglement’ - whereby a particle might be in two places at the same time - but is the cat just a sum total of its’ particles?
  • Two entangled particles might at different times exhibit the same phenomena, but why does it necessarily mean that one is able to affect the past by seeing a future event? In some contexts, that seems a possible outcome. What holds good with particles may not invariably apply to human stories?
  • ‘Quantum superposition: an object can be in two different states at the same time.’ That surely doesn’t mean it cannot be in one state as well as the other. Why does the situation have to be perceived in a binary manner?
  • If ‘the temporal sequence of two events also can exist in superposition, the arrow of time could have abrupt kinks in its trajectory.’ That doesn’t prove that time actually can go ‘backward’?
  • Note the words ‘might’ and ‘hypothetical’ and the sentences ‘the experiment was tricky and the device had to be built in such a way that until the very end you cannot know or extract which was the result. ,,,,It is hypothetical that a photon fired near a planet with a strong gravitation pull which would cause nearby clocks to slow so one would get the photon before the start time’ They are the giveaway that we are in the further realms of hypothesis. It is admitted that testing the theory mentioned properly is not at present possible.
  • Why is what holds good with particles – in particular the ‘retroactive causality’ - invariably apply to human stories? Is it going too far to claim on the basis of this theory, however well attested, that the future can retroactively influence the past?

PROPOSITION F: STEPHEN HAWKINGS’ FINAL THEOREM

Why is the universe just right for life to arise? Twiddle ever so slightly with any of the numerous laws of physics and habitability would often hang in the balance.
All that there is to know about the interior of Black Holes can be encrypted on their event horizon surface. Maldacena saw the universe like a hologram. A system of entangled particles located on a surface may contain within it all the information of a higher-dimensional cosmos with gravity and curved space-time. Einstein’s theory of gravity works with quantum theory. History itself is hologrammatically encrypted – in the dimension of time that holographically pops out. Time emerges in the ex post facto manner, contingent on the present. It’s not the laws that are fundamental but their capacity to change.
Exposition (a): It seems that some properties of physical laws were not carved in stone but could be the accidental outcome of the particular manner in which the early universe cooled after the big bang. Random transitions, so it there perhaps more than one universe? (p 74). Maybe there is a multiverse – an enormous inflating space with a variegated patch work of universe, each with its own big bang, leading to its own local physical laws.
Exposition (b): The Higgs boson (it weighs as much as 133 protons – this is a 100 million billion times lighter than what many physicists would consider a natural mass) couples to other particles of matter and so imbues them with mass, which adds to the Higg’s own matter, so one would expect it to be far weightier. The unbearable lightness of the Higgs is critical for life. Higgs keeps electrons, protons, neutrons etc and light as well, and this ensure that DNA, proteins and cells don’t collapse under the force of gravity.
Exposition (c): consider the expansion of the universe. In 1998 cosmologists discovered that the expansion of space has been accelerating for about 5 billion years. Because of Vacuum Energy, predicted by Quantum theory BUT the density of vacuum energy seems to be 10 x 120 times lower than expected of the theory. If the vacuum energy density of the universe were just a tad larger, however, its repulsive effect would be stronger and acceleration would have kicked in much earlier. This would have meant that matter was so sparsely distributed that it couldn’t clump together to forms stars and galaxies.
Hawking is not happy with a multiverse: ‘We are not angels who view the universe from the outside’. Multiverse cosmology needs ‘metalaws’ governing all the universes, but they don’t specify in which of the habitable universes we are supposed to be in. Without a rule that relates the metalaws of the multiverse to the local laws within our universe, there is a spiral of paradoxes.

QUERIES ON PROPOSITION F:

  • Hawking’s question makes sense. What is odd is the fact that none of Hawkins’ collaborators teachers had appeared to ask the question ‘Why is the universe the way it is?’
  • Hawkins’ doubts about a Multiverse seem likewise grounded. That there could be an infinity of universes each spinning off every nano-second, defies our credulity in what is more than just a typical counter-intuitive way that these theories sometimes have.
  • ‘Without a rule that relates the metalaws of the multiverse to the local laws within our universe, there is a spiral of paradoxes’ - It is not just the fact that we don’t have this convenient rulebook that renders the idea way beyond comprehension.
  • It is hard to see how all information that lies within an ‘event’ like a black hole can be deduced from what is on the surface; several facets or features no doubt, but that the entire interior can be gauged by its surface seems prima facie a bridge too far?

PROPOSITION G: Re: The expansion of the universe

In 1998 cosmologists discovered that the expansion of space has been accelerating for about 5 billion years.
Exposition: Because of Vacuum Energy, predicted by Quantum theory BUT the density of vacuum energy seems to be 10 x 120 times lower than expected of the theory. If the vacuum energy density of the universe were just a tad larger, however, its repulsive effect would be stronger and acceleration would have kicked in much earlier. This would have meant that matter was so sparsely distributed that it couldn’t clump together to forms stars and galaxies.

QUERY ON PROPOSITION G:
Why, when the universe is apparently 14.5 billion years old has it been accelerating for ‘only’ 5 billion years?

PROPOSITION H: Molecular Clocks

‘ticks using vibrations of strontium that could be used to test Einstein’s theory of relativity or search for forces that have yet to be described’.

QUERY ON PROPOSITION H:

  • It is an admission that scientists are aware that there are forces yet to be described.
  • The second law of thermodynamics may state that in a closed system (nothing goes in or out) entropy will always increase, with entropy being the measure of a system’s thermal energy per unit that is unavailable for doing useful work. To assume of a state like the entire cosmos that it is a closed system is begging one fundamental question: is the cosmos a closed system for any purpose other than making our theories about it sound neat?
  • Or take ‘entropy’, a concept associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty: to get from there to the idea that: ’the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe (will be) to an ultimate state of inert uniformity.’ may need so much unpacking that the packaging itself may obscure our gaze on what we can perceive as the reality

Back to Ruminative reflection

A kaleidoscope of staggering facts has been unfurled if we retain the faculty of wonder.

So much that we do not understand or can interpret with certainty about the cosmos! But then we ourselves, conscious beings, do not know what is our own essence. A soul, or our essence, is not able to render itself in language or be properly understood but yet there it is - if it is - actually inside of us, and we still don’t know what it is.
Like the cosmos, we came into being from nothing. We can see stages in which we came into existence but cannot unpack the mystery of the origin of semen or womb. Much as we can analyse the birth process for our understanding, we did not create it.

If a particle can be in two places at the same time - a mystery we can hardly hope to fully comprehend - and the same applies to atomic parts of planets as to us, it seems from this and other evidence that there is an interconnected system including us, and we are at least in part the stuff of stars. A key to fathom some mysteries in the cosmos may be closer at hand than astronomers currently think, namely in our own bodies?


Ruminative Reflection itself can need to relax from active to passive mode. This subtle change can be observed when one falls back onto tried and tested formulae such as:
On a particular day one can hear a great message of wisdom and it could have no meaning to one at all. The mind might not be tuned into that appropriate wavelength at that particular time. On another day the same message could change one’s life.

Hamlet’s homily that ‘there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ has been overshadowed by an exponential increase in knowledge. We should take on board how much more we do not know that was not even suspected at the time Shakespeare was writing. If we consider all the questions, this journey may be more important than the arrival at a state of total knowledge about everything. Our perspective on our lives our attitude about our place in the universe and what is important in life, as we don’t know it, may have shifted towards reality - if that is of relevance…

Reflection Represented in Figurine Form

Reflection is a particular and a useful state of mind but we tend to overlook it through its familiarity. We can treat it in a cavalier way, not paying much attention to someone given over to reflection. We might suppose that they are staring 'vacantly' into space.

We can recognise someone in a pose of reflection though Reflection to date is not characterised by a genre in representational form - though many people recognise Rodin’s ‘Thinker’. It was perhaps the first time that attention was directed towards the posture.

Below is a montage of figurines showing subjects in a ruminative state of Reflection.

'La Penseuse' (French female Thinker)

Modern art 'Thinker' by Tolleck Winner

A caricature of Einstein who wrote ‘I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking’

What can we be sure of?

By J. Glass Preamble Leaving aside such hoary pensées as that of Descartes’, ‘I think therefore I am’, how much of the world can we know from our own observation? How aware of how reliant are we on the work of others? How do we know - if not an astrophysicist - that the moon is 238.555 miles away? The earth may not be flat ‘as a pancake’ given the mountain ranges but do we check it out, ruler in hand? We ‘stand on the shoulders of the Greats’ but don’t throw a wobbly even though we believe that politicos or prelates not of our pet persuasion have feet of clay. Rather we think they often seem to sprout a third foot just to soak up excess terracotta! Not so the scientific community; it is venerated. Can we raise an eyebrow at some theories though it is the scientists who thrive on these puzzles? If one pipes up with a query about science, one at least can be emboldened by the fact that scientists often aren’t of one mind. Some things seem odd in the current view of the Cosmos. An impressive tour d’horizon in ‘New Scientist’s Essential guide to TIME: Adventures in the fourth dimension’ (Guide No 19) plumbs deep mysteries. It is a wonderful summation of where we are at in this scientific frontier of discovery. Scientists test theories, shake phials, perform mathematical prodigies, a metaphoric towel round their eggheads, awe-inspiring work, grounded in reality. What is ‘reality’? NASA didn’t send up a poet to the moon simply to rid planet earth of a noodle-head. It is a worthwhile goal to try and find out as much as we can about our place in the world. The exercise of considering these issues en passant may give us perspective on our lives. Pack for this magical mystery tour John Thorn’s advice to ‘show a healthy disrespect for the printed word’ and perhaps a flask of double brandy. When measurements are taken, observations docketed, and complicated maths unveiled, why allow just scientists a say on the significance of cosmological findings?
What Is below is a nibbling at the edges by someone trying to come to grips with a world beyond his scientific understanding. Those interested to pursue in depth the questions that arise should consult scientific tracts on the subject/s. Some queries below would seem to pack more punch than others.
PROPOSITION A: THE BIG BANG The Big Bang is thought to be the start of time and of space. In the beginning, it exploded out of nothing then rapidly expanded… When our space-time was less than a second old, this expansion accelerated faster than the speed of light of cosmic acceleration for a very brief moment, a percentage of a second with 40 zeros after the decimal, an exponential rate of increase (with mould on a loaf, what is a little bit because a lot very quickly)…The early universe can be tested by deciphering the cosmic microwave background radiation, the flood of light released 380,000 years after the Big Bang…The only thing that can violate the universal speed limit is space-time. (ibid). QUERIES ON PROPOSITION A:
  • Something surely must have been there before that starting point even if we do not know what it was. To quote Shakespeare in King Lear: ‘Nothing can come out of nothing!’
  • If space-time isn’t entirely understood, how do we know that it can’t violate universal speed?
  • A dissentient scientist: ‘Paul Steinhardt replaces the big bang with a big bounce and a cyclic universe.’ (ibid)
  • A percentage of a second with 40 zeros after the decimal? That seems to be of an accuracy so extraordinary that one would feel more confident in the statistic if the word ‘estimated’ was added? The magnitude of the power exuded in such a minute fraction of time is so mind-bogging that one might be inclined to think it is entirely beyond present human comprehension
  • The testing of the early universe as described above is indubitably a highly impressive exercise. How much of the multifarious features that must have characterised the early universe can be deduced from this observation?
  • PROPOSITION B: TIME DILATION Bob sets up 2 pulses of lift to each end of the carriage. What he sees is that they hit the walls simultaneously, but this is not what Alice - an observer affected by the fact that the train has moved forward - sees from the platform. If observers who move relative to one another cannot agree on the simultaneity of events they cannot agree on the measurement of time. Exposition: What we think is that we are stationary but in reality we are all compared to an observer outside the planet… To Alice, the light-pulse travels a longer path than if the train is stationery. The speed of light is a constant so the time taken for one tick of the moving clock of Bob is longer according to Alice. According to Relativity Bob can make the same calculation but he regards the train as at rest – so he infers that the clock on the platform is running slow. The readings of the clocks ‘at the same instant’ can’t be compared until we decide what the same instant means; Bob and Alice think differently about it. Example of testing: Christian Lisdat of the National Metrology Institute of Germany put a strontium atomic clock on a moving trailer with rubber dampers to mitigate (is that enough?) vibrations, climate control to stabiilise temperature, and measurements were taken in French mountains and in low-lying Turin. A year in the Alps was shown to be 84 nanoseconds longer in Turin. Tobias Boulder in 2023 in Colorado stacked hundreds of thousands of strontium atoms in a vertical stack I QUERIES ON PROPOSITION B:
  • The measurement of time, is surely what scientists can’t agree on, not time itself.
  • Is the acid test of whether or not a thing exists is that ‘it can be measured’? One cannot accurately measure for instance an emotion but it may exist.
  • The variation in speed may result from earth factors not galactic ones?
  • PROPOSITION C: COSMOLOGICAL TIME DILATION Time seems to have ticked more slowly when the universe was young. Light from ancient cosmic events travel increasingly longer distances to reach earth. Those events seem to unfold more slowly than an event here and now. Anyone around at the start would have seen time evolving normally Exposition: Around 7 billion years ago an event appears to evolve at 60% of the speed we see today. In 2023 Geraint Lewis at Sydney University … detected a more extreme version earlier. They looked at 190 quasars, (objects at the centre of some galaxies - a supermassive black hole surrounded by a disc of hot plasma that spits out high energy particles) … The earliest quasar about 1 billion years after the start of the universe appears to run five times more slowly that quasars from today. QUERIES ON PROPOSITION C:
  • The speed of time in these examples ‘appears’ to us to be running more slowly but this may only be a consequence of our particular vantage point.
  • Why is the speed of the quasar/s at the start of the universe said to be the same as that of subsequent quasars? It is a good hypothesis, not more.
  • If time was ‘evolving normally’ at the start, does this beg the whole question?
  • This is the tiniest of tiny differences. Need a tiny wrinkle like this affect the overall picture save in an academic sense?
  • PROPOSITION D: PERCEIVING TIME Most of us can estimate time passing with amazing precision thanks to a complex network of neural mechanisms; perhaps we even create the arrow of time in our heads. Our bodies keep track of time unconsciously too – which contributes to our perception of time slowing down or speeding up Exposition: In the absence of clocks, schedules or calendars our bodies still march to the beat of internal timekeepers called circadian (in the suprachiasmatic nucleus which relies on pendulum-like oscillations inside proteins to keep us in synch with the sun rhythms.) A connection to the spinning of earth on its axis that ensure that biological processes occur at the right time of day or night. Various organs work optimally at certain times, the way we respond to medicines etc – are our bodies operating in time with the physical world. Light hits specialised cells on the retinas of our eyes that send signals about the time of day to a master clock in the brain – it regulates a multitude of clocks in cells and organs throughout the body. ‘Place cells’ mark where in a spatial environment an animal is. If an animal walks in a linear tunnel, place cells fire in a linear line. Time cells do something similar but for the passage of time. At an event, ie a dinner party or movie, the brain recognises this as a specific or notable chunk of time, what neuroscientists call an ‘episode’. The subjective experience of time may depend on how many episodes one is creating. To track the passing of time we may also need ‘ramping cells.’ Time cells wait till it is their turn to fire, a ramping cell will fire intensely to mark the beginning of an episode, then gradually slow down. So…the brain combines information from place cells about where an event is happening and sensory information about what is going on…then add in the time and ramping cell activity, and the brain puts all the information into the appropriate time frame. It’s packaged into episodic memories and stored allowing us to perceive the temporal order of our lives. But there may be other rhythms. Theta rhythms – waves of brain activity that oscillate at around 4 to 8 hertz – may timestamp activities, depending on where within the wave they occur…there is one model proposed in which theta oscillations are happening in multiple places in the hippocampus and where other neurons fire relative to this wave. Some researchers believe that the brain can tell time without time and ramping cells. QUERIES ON PROPOSITION D:
  • This all seems an excellent way of mapping what is going on in our bodies and their extraordinary complexity. Is there an overriding query about whether all this fundamentally ‘explains’ what is going on? Are the above factors the result of something else? For instance, is there an actuating spirit in each of us? Are the above-given factors the physiological markings of this?
  • ‘In synch with the sun’ – why is it in synch with just the sun? Surely this internal time clock, assuming it exists as an independent variable, is in synch with other cosmological bodies?
  • An observation: ‘A ramping cell will fire intensely to mark the beginning of an episode, then gradually slow down.’ If we come from the stars, is the above-described process comparable to the order of the universe speeding up exponentially?
  • The range of possible, seemingly contradictory explanations given implies that each explanation must remain for the time being as only a hypothesis.
  • An animal - examples are given - may perceive time as passing at a different rate from human beings. Insects can live for just a day, a lifetime for them. Time being perceived by man in a way that suits man can be understood as having a subjective dimension on grounds of common sense.
  • PROPOSITION E: CAUSE AND EFFECT IN THE QUANTUM REALM The lack of straightforward cause and effect in the quantum mechanical world muddles our understanding of how time works in the smallest realm. Predicting the way a glass will shatter is easier than the process in reverse. Can objects be in two different states at the same time? Cause and effect doesn’t exist in the Quantum world; an object can be in two separate states at the same time. Exposition: Quantum superposition (is defined) as an object being in two different states at the same time… In 2012 it was proposed that the temporal sequence of two events, just like the positions of a particle or the path it took, could also exist in superposition. Thus the arrow of time could have abrupt kinks in its trajectory. A Viennese University professor, Herr Walther, saw a photon pass through two gates, A & B, but it was impossible to tell which it went through first. This might hold true for causality. The idea that the present can influence the past is ‘retrocausality’ – follows from superposition General Relativity doesn’t sit easily with quantum mechanics. General Relativity is a set of equations that describe the way classical objects are affected by gravity. The 3 dimensions of space and the 4th dimension of space are part of the same entity, woven into pace-time. Hence space-time bends around large masses. Time slows down when objects move close to the speed of light. Anything that concerns the dynamics of things larger than an individual particle. Quantum mechanics by contrast shows that atoms and sub-atomic particles are governed by the other three fundamental forces of nature, the electromagnetic force and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Partciles can appear to be in two places at the same time, information passing between them even though they may be separated by large distances. Particles can seem affected by events that happen in their future. QUERIES ON PROPOSITION E:
  • An observation: Retro-causality: the present can influence the past. It opens up an area of speculation that is hardly touched on in this account. It may be a way of explaining the circularity of time and the hypothesis mentioned above that surprising things that one felt keenly at an early phase of one’s life may hove into significance in the light of subsequent events.
  • What might be true of the smallest realms doesn’t necessarily make it true of all other realms? Why because an observation happens at a nano-level does it have to hold good at a cosmic scale level? Why must there be just one such law governing all creation?
  • This is of relevance to the ‘Schrodinger’s Cat’ conundrum (the mere fact of inspecting whether a cat inside a sealed box is dead or alive can alter its fate). The observer interferes with the observed. This may be logical given the results of ‘entanglement’ - whereby a particle might be in two places at the same time - but is the cat just a sum total of its’ particles?
  • ‘Quantum superposition: an object can be in two different states at the same time.’ That surely doesn’t mean it cannot be in one state as well as the other. Why does the situation have to be perceived in a binary manner?
  • If ‘the temporal sequence of two events also can exist in superposition, the arrow of time could have abrupt kinks in its trajectory.’ That doesn’t prove that time actually can go ‘backward’?
  • Two entangled particles might at different times exhibit the same phenomena, but why does it necessarily mean that one is able to affect the past by seeing a future event? In some contexts, that seems a possible outcome. What holds good with particles may not invariably apply to human stories?
  • Note the words ‘might’ and ‘hypothetical’ and the sentences ‘the experiment was tricky and the device had to be built in such a way that until the very end you cannot know or extract which was the result. ,,,,It is hypothetical that a photon fired near a planet with a strong gravitation pull which would cause nearby clocks to slow so one would get the photon before the start time’ They are the giveaway that we are in the further realms of hypothesis. It is admitted that testing the theory mentioned properly is not at present possible.
  • PROPOSITION F: STEPHEN HAWKINGS’ FINAL THEOREM Why is the universe just right for life to arise? Twiddle ever so slightly with any of the numerous laws of physics and habitability would often hang in the balance. All that there is to know about the interior of Black Holes can be encrypted on their event horizon surface. Maldacena saw the universe like a hologram. A system of entangled particles located on a surface may contain within it all the information of a higher-dimensional cosmos with gravity and curved space-time. Einstein’s theory of gravity works with quantum theory. History itself is hologrammatically encrypted – in the dimension of time that holographically pops out. Time emerges in the ex post facto manner, contingent on the present. It’s not the laws that are fundamental but their capacity to change. Exposition (a): It seems that some properties of physical laws were not carved in stone but could be the accidental outcome of the particular manner in which the early universe cooled after the big bang. Random transitions, so it there perhaps more than one universe? (p 74). Maybe there is a multiverse – an enormous inflating space with a variegated patch work of universe, each with its own big bang, leading to its own local physical laws. Exposition (b): The Higgs boson (it weighs as much as 133 protons – this is a 100 million billion times lighter than what many physicists would consider a natural mass) couples to other particles of matter and so imbues them with mass, which adds to the Higg’s own matter, so one would expect it to be far weightier. The unbearable lightness of the Higgs is critical for life. Higgs keeps electrons, protons, neutrons etc and light as well, and this ensure that DNA, proteins and cells don’t collapse under the force of gravity. Exposition (c): consider the expansion of the universe. In 1998 cosmologists discovered that the expansion of space has been accelerating for about 5 billion years. Because of Vacuum Energy, predicted by Quantum theory BUT the density of vacuum energy seems to be 10 x 120 times lower than expected of the theory. If the vacuum energy density of the universe were just a tad larger, however, its repulsive effect would be stronger and acceleration would have kicked in much earlier. This would have meant that matter was so sparsely distributed that it couldn’t clump together to forms stars and galaxies. Hawking is not happy with a multiverse: ‘We are not angels who view the universe from the outside’. Multiverse cosmology needs ‘metalaws’ governing all the universes, but they don’t specify in which of the habitable universes we are supposed to be in. Without a rule that relates the metalaws of the multiverse to the local laws within our universe, there is a spiral of paradoxes. QUERIES ON PROPOSITION F:
  • Hawking’s question makes sense. What is odd is the fact that none of Hawkins’ collaborators teachers had appeared to ask the question ‘Why is the universe the way it is?’
  • Hawkins’ doubts about a Multiverse seem likewise grounded. That there could be an infinity of universes each spinning off every nano-second, defies our credulity in what is more than just a typical counter-intuitive way that these theories sometimes have.
  • ‘Without a rule that relates the metalaws of the multiverse to the local laws within our universe, there is a spiral of paradoxes’ - It is not just the fact that we don’t have this convenient rulebook that renders the idea way beyond comprehension.
  • It is hard to see how all information that lies within an ‘event’ like a black hole can be deduced from what is on the surface; several facets or features no doubt, but that the entire interior can be gauged by its surface seems prima facie a bridge too far?
  • Conclusion There is so very much we do not understand. In the scriptures the Lord appeared in a cloud. One did not directly see Him. Perhaps this is as good a metaphor as any. Take molecular clocks - ‘ticks using vibrations of strontium that could be used to test Einstein’s theory of relativity or search for forces that have yet to be described’. (ibid). It is an admission that scientists are aware that there are forces yet to be described. The second law of thermodynamics may state that in a closed system (nothing goes in or out) entropy will always increase, with entropy being the measure of a system’s thermal energy per unit that is unavailable for doing useful work. To assume of a state like the entire cosmos that it is a closed system is begging one fundamental question: is the cosmos a closed system for any purpose other than making our theories about it sound neat? Or take ‘entropy’, a concept associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty: to get from there to the idea that: ’the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe (will be) to an ultimate state of inert uniformity.’ may need so much unpacking that the packaging itself may obscure our gaze on what we can perceive as the reality Such a kaleidoscope of mind-blowing concepts! Almost every page of the New Scientist edition, the basis on which this article was written, from so many experts in the field and also so many other monographs, papers, tracts and the like, contain revelations for the layman. How strange it all is! How much scope for reflection! One could do worse than say, with Hamlet, that ‘there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ but at least we should realise this much.

    Review: Ghosts and Hauntings by Dennis Bardens

    Bardens proclaims himself a journalist as against being an author. That said, he has an impressive track record of serious biographies to his name including those of Princess Margaret, Elizabeth Fry and Landru. He worked on the TV series Panorama, indeed he coined that title. His deep research into the unseen world has teased out of it much that has been seen. He is into facts and corroboration and he has a keen eye for detail. It might be said: ‘Look in his book ye Sceptics and despair!’ Bardens employs the full battery of his forensic and inquisitorial techniques to examine countless tales of spooks that rear out of the nether world. He does so with the attention that allowed him to survive the WW2 as a ‘spook’ in a colloquial sense of that term. A slip-up at that time would have meant his being unmasked; he diced with death and was not rumbled by the Hun. He has a sure touch. There are several common denominators in the large number of stories in Ghosts & Hauntings that give the lie to any imputation of Bardens doing other than tacking the subject with a sceptical eye. The naysayer is confounded by a weight of evidence, meticulously examined. Bardens looks with jaundiced eye at tall stories. He asks the reader to come up with a different read-out than the conclusion that there must be ‘something to it’. He chooses convincing tales out of the almost unending supply on offer, ones where there are a number of independent witnesses. He zeros in on ghastly phenomena - far more than things that merely ‘go bump in the night’ - that have been observed throughout recorded history by unknowns and knowns in a range of settings from haunted mansions to more pedestrian environs or the front lines of a war; animals as well as humans can be ghosts. His reportage of past goings-on looks at the most impeccable of sources with much erudition. The stories of hauntings that have occurred in his lifetime, he follows up visiting ‘the scene of the crime’ with detective’s nostrils akimbo; he asks for the verification of people who have no history of nervous indisposition and do not see themselves as a prey to fancy; their lifestyle invariably speaks otherwise. Bardens offers some explanations of what he finds but what is hardly in doubt as a result of the weight of evidence is that something very strange is going on. Are the ghostly visitations that people his pages an imprint on ether or a projection of ideas, in some form? He writes: ‘Do the thoughts of the dying have any permanence? Can they register on the atmosphere or on inanimate objects and be picked up in certain conditions by living people? Or - a somewhat melancholy thought - is there a brief transition where the brain still has thoughts and can project images after death?’ Story after story is as much mind-bending as mind-boggling; many are the accounts of people keeling over in fright, sometimes fatally, after they have seen horrors. It is a grisly procession that en passant makes for a gripping read, if told in a matter-of-fact way. On occasion, there are benign presences but none human in the normal sense of the word. Perhaps we should reconsider what this is… Dennis Bardens had a sense of humour. A note on his front door warned callers that he was ‘OUT TO LUNCH. BACK IN FIVE YEARS! PLEASE WAIT!’ Every now and again a sardonic jibe surfaces in his book: ‘Anne Boleyn, whose head … rolled beneath the axe of Henry’s busy executioner…’; he writes. It takes a Dennis to append the adjective ‘busy’. He quotes the Marquise du Deffand who, asked if she believed in ghosts, replied “No, but I’m afraid of them.” It seems a pity in one way that this book is shot through with a seriousness that his subject merits. Bardens cites poems alluding to ghostly happenings. Another example is The Way Through the Woods in ‘Poet’s Corner’ of this website.

    The Underlying Approach to Reflection

    Little of what follows is as easy as it might seem.

    Reflection is a mental or cerebral state of mind. Mental attitude is in thought processes more than in a physical preparation. There should be an understanding that ‘reflection’ is an activity in itself that is to be valued and prepared for, not just a thing that anybody automatically does or can do without thinking, forethought or appreciation.

    A change in perspective can have profound, beneficial, practical consequences.

    There should be a wish to concentrate on things that matter to one. A wish for clarity of mind, as the Gayatri mantra advocates, should be included on one’s Wish List. The idea is by introspection without distraction to assess the overall, balanced picture.

    A comfortable posture helps. Anything that negates negativity helps.

    It is increasingly felt that positive thinking – sending of positive information to oneself – helps attract the positive energy of the universe.
    There is no requirement to theorise.

    It is a salve for angry, emotional thinking or behaving – an enemy within. To best fight that, as with any enemy, it should first be fully Identified. A determination to counter to a maximum degree being overwrought or consumed by practical difficulty is part of the preparation.

    The wish to accomplish this or any task is half the battle to seeing it through to success. The clothing of what tends to be regarded as mental events in the imagery of practicality – as ‘a task’ rather than ‘an idea’ – is part of the mental preparation. There should be the deeply-felt wish to reach a calm balanced outlook. One seeks being happy in life, contentedness with one’s lot. Do you sincerely want this? ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again!’

    The smallest change in attitude in time can bring large changes in thinking and action.
    Once the goal is clear, a path is signposted.

    What is your best path? This question is one of many good starting points.
    ‘It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently’, as Dostoyevsky said
    Reflection as a predominating attitude seeks to reclaim mental terrain that used to be the norm of those who simply wished to Meditate. Not for our forebears wanting solace in mediation were there prescribed, variegated forms of body exercises. A nod in the direction of taking physical steps might be dressing up for church, settling down in a quiet nook or setting aside time for fruitful thinking even just rumination. Mental rather than physical preparation was and is advised to put one in the right frame of mind.

    ‘…Grant that this … day, given by Thy Fatherly kindness, be not lost to my fellow creatures or myself, may it be one of the useful days of my life …shield my heart from evil passions… endeavouring to exalt my mind and purify my soul …The mind… released from the material cares of life…, drawing that delicious sustenance from Thy Divine precepts which gives strength, wisdom and happiness…’
    Suchlike thoughts are calming, without need for instance of going out of one’s way to, say, control one’s breath. The above lines are from a Judaic prayer and preparation for prayer but the drift is much the same as needed for reflection regardless of religion or spirituality. Great thinkers have covered most nooks of deepest thinking regardless of what garb or belief clothed their thought.
    Whatever de-stressing turns you on to the right mental plane is for you to see. There are many suggestions given on this website. It will help you form the habit needed and we are creatures of habit. The story of a brilliant Cambridge scholar who prepared for critical exams by going fishing is not just apocryphal.
    The precise form of words is not the crux. Any stance that is true for an individual in fundamentals is much the same. Words in themselves in any case hardly give one an idea of underlying reality and may be illusory. Knowledge of essential truth in any case is given to few, if any, to know.
    Self-reliance and self-discipline are keys to the right-minded attitude. Some people may need more assistance, professional or empathetic, than others. Practice may be needed to achieve quietness of mind and a holistic way of looking at life. A detached perspective – your hard-won ideas rather than the hand-me-downs of other people’s’ thoughts, or taking for granted a background culture – is within your grasp.
    Be a master, not a servant, of your own thinking as far as possible and you will be the happier for it and society will be the better for having you in it.
    It needs unflinching honesty with oneself. Be honest with yourself; no one but you is listening. Reflection is a solitary occupation.
    ‘Practice’, it is said, ‘makes perfect’.

    A person who wishes to reflect can choose his area of interest or concentration if it does not immediately suggest itself. At different times, ideas may change.
    (a) Is your wish to reflect on your personal past? Reflecting on this sometimes may be likened to the charm felt by a tightrope walker who, after crossing an abyss, looks safely down into it or a long-distance runner in the changing room after his exertions who experiences a sense or surge of relief.

    Was Socrates right in toto or in part to say: ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’

    (b) Do you want to ask ‘What is life about’? People often think along such lines in adolescence but why presume that we did all our fundamental thinking by the time we reach adulthood? It is a civilised thing to do, to ask oneself what one’s life, and the panorama of life, is about.

    (c) Is it to consider what one wishes to achieve in life; and how to do it?

    As with all illustrations on this website, the precept above is not inscribed on a tablet of stone. The question as always in this institute is: ‘Do you agree with it?’

    (d) Do you want to think about your relationships with other people?

    (e) Do you want to ‘Know thyself’, the injunction of the Delphic Oracle? This, again, is not as easy to accomplish as it might look.

    (f) Do you want to consider any about yourself or anyone else?

    If you ignore reality you should not ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

    The more one looks into almost any idea or task the more complex it can appear. The attainment of a settled view in which one can have confidence often comes through a careful consideration of it even if the end result may not be far from the starting point.

    There is very much that has been written that can help induce an attitude of Reflection. The purpose of such texts may not have been specifically to reflect as such but they will help induce a state of reflection. Many of these passages in literature can be part of your ‘handbook’ to a contemplative mind. The best and most uplifting examples help anyone become better-balanced.
    Think this through, quietly looking out for what is tailor-made for you.
    What do you wish to reflect on?
    What type of reflection will help best to get you to your chosen goal?

    Reflection is a wide category. We all know what it is but do we do it; do we recognise the beneficial results and go out of our way to put them into practice?
    To speak in broad category, there are two main types of reflection:
    There is what might be termed a ruminant type of reflection. This is often with the purpose of trying to tease out what is really going on in the subconscious. That can be an effect even if it is spelled out as the intention. Carl Jung writes: ‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.’
    There is interest in letting the mind wander this way and that, observing what emerges.
    It is best if the conscious mind does not waive its nature or responsibilities. We are human first and foremost. If the mind is bolting or moving off in all directions rather like an unruly elephant, then the mahout, or elephant driver, should try and cajole it back on track. It is often the emotions that overwhelm and they are not conducive to calm reflection. If nothing else, they should be seen for what they are, again. Its best to master them if that is what is considered on reflection to be the best course. Aids to meditation, the soft music, the incense, the candles and so forth enumerated non-exhaustively in, say, the Sanctuary on this website may play a helpful role.
    This is the state of mind most likely to breed the products of intuition; the ideas that come from ‘one knows not where’. This process is to be distinguished from that of ‘thinking’ (unless thinking is broadly defined).

    Some intuitions vanish on surfacing, like dreams, some entrench themselves. See them for what they are, perhaps get them down on paper, thar they may best be inspected in the broad light of day.

    There is a primarily cerebral type of reflection. We wish, say, to unravel a problem or come up with a solution as to which direction to take at a crossroads’ or at a deeper level come up with guidance as to how to live our lives. It can be about what type of a person we wish to become – on a day-to-day or more panoramic basis – or a general decision on what main course to follow in a specific context. Do we wish to change? Thought precedes action. We wish to think our way towards the right solution, a way forward in life. ‘Look before you leap’ is mantra of reflection.

    Emotions need not be downgraded to an unimportant part of the mix. An emotional reaction is not necessarily wrong per se – though may depend on the type of emotion. Love is different from anger. We are human and so have emotions but at the end of the day the more undesirable of them ideally should be kept in check and fully justified not just ‘felt’. Anger is very rarely a good counsellor but, that said, sometimes a show of anger on a public stage may help push over an obstacle. Reflection should precede action. If the course of action decided is to follow this route – anger usually is a last resort – it will gain through a feeling of conviction that is buttressed by careful planning.
    How to think about our destiny? One can feel that some deep things must be true; to be persuaded of their truth, especially with statements in conclusion, needs a degree of probing and consideration that tends to toward the cerebral. It is if to summon up an outsider – in oneself – to look in on the questions one throws up.
    There should be as little distraction as possible. Avoidance of digression or misleading by-ways tends to take practice. People might be distracted by the roar of an aeroplane or loud music when, say, trying to solve a mathematics problem but anyone who has prepared for an exam knows the drill. Nerves and fear should be kept at bay. There is little point thinking about how good it would be to pass an exam when trying to tease out a solution to a problem in the exam paper. Concentrate on each step along the way. The goal that started you off originally might be to pass the exam but that isn’t the way to get a particular question right. But if you tell yourself when playing chess that getting a move right is a matter of life and death, you are less likely to make a mistake. It also helps to try and enjoy what you are doing.

    Conclusion

    Who are you, really? Which are the traits or different aspects of your ‘I’ that you would like predominate above others and be your better self, whoever it may be? Why are you here on this earth? Wouldn’t you like to know, or at least have some idea? How might your considered thinking affect how you live your life?

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    The Driifloat Vision

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    On Science

    It is a strongly held view of many people that there is no such thing as an Afterlife: all we have is here in earth and when we die, it is curtains on any existence we can have. To someone postulating this, and it is usually with confidence, the question can be put: ‘How do you know?’ It is unlikely to elicit from the sceptically minded anything resembling a proof.

    This is just one area where balanced views should not necessarily be intuitive but science-led.

    The doubters may be right though their non-faith also may be akin to an article of faith. The sceptics are entitled to receive a dose of their own medicine, and be challenged. It cannot be acceptable to claim that anything for which there is no evidence cannot be true – though admittedly this argument also can be used to justify blind faith.

    There are innumerable studies to show that there is a correlation between the physical body and mental condition. Physical happenings within the body result from, and cause, a change in mental attitude. This is not surprising at one level. One has only to consider the effect on a testosterone-fuelled youth ogling a can-can dance in the Lido as compared with that on a greybeard, however lecherous.

    The way in which science should impact on a far wider spectrum of situations and beliefs should be a focus of interest to any thinking person. Galileo handed his inquisition interrogators a telescope and said ‘Look Through That!’. They did not, and we ridicule their purblind attitude. Let us not fall into the same trap. We should make this journey without knowing in advance which parts of our beliefs may be buttressed by our discoveries, and which turn out to be just plain wrong, little as we may want to admit it.

    Are powerful unseen Forces hedged around us that might have a scientific cause, as yet unattributed, and which act on people in ways that we cannot accurately identify let alone define; or whether ‘human’ emotions are not exclusively ours but part of the natural order of the cosmos? What is to be found when microscope or telescope are turned onto a previously ‘Unseen World’?

    It is a powerful word – ‘pseudo-science’. The moment we see it, we are inclined to look with a jaundiced eye on whatever might be the finding of committed people that go against the grain of our pet beliefs. Persuasive books and tracts have been written to debunk the basis of ideas about the some of the ways that the mind and the body might interact. Telepathy, clairvoyance, the beneficial intercession of healers, out-of-body experiences, the spirit world in general and the gamut of such possibilities, are examples of what is sometimes seen as ‘pseudo-science’, metaphysics or even ‘old wives’ tales’. A forensic tour-de-force of this landscape of what might be called ‘Wishful Thinking’ is to be found in ‘Why People Believe Weird Things’ subtitled ‘Pseudoscience, superstition and other confusions of our time‘ by Michael Shermer, published by W,H, Freeman and Company of New York. Many ‘proofs’ of phenomena are taken apart in Shermer’s work and the attitudes of mind that lead even scientists let alone the lay public into delusive ideas and faulty thinking are gone into in a detail that might satisfy the most hardened sceptic. Shermer is not alone.

    Is there a baby in the bathwater? The rejectionist position regarding almost all that might be said to emanate from the intangible world is arguably – or controversially – to belittle at least some of the results of recent scientific experimentation under stringent laboratory conditions. If for instance the interaction of minds acting at a distance on one another is admitted as a respectable, tenable hypothesis – while admitting that very little in life is 100% certain – much that was hitherto questionable supposition about ‘the unseen world’ becomes increasingly grounded in territory that may be described as hard reality.

    Review: Rupert Sheldrake – Morphic Resonance

    Preamble

    The significance of scientific discovery, not just the discoveries themselves, is part of the rationale of this institute. How do they affect our beliefs and credos? Scientists do the deep research but what do their facts or purported facts tell people?

    Rupert Sheldrake has given years to thinking about Morphic Resonance (MR). For those interested to know more detail than appears below, his book of that title, Morphic Resonance, gives chapter and verse. His views once were thought heretical by the science community but opinion is gathering that he is in the mainstream. If true or possibly true, how can MR affect our attitudes and beliefs, and so our lives?

    By way of illustration of this question, the author of this review recently met a man who has over 900 children; he may have had many more but lost count presumably after the first hundred or so. He has made a lucrative career out of being a sperm donor. Let us suppose for a moment that his ambition was to spread his ‘seed’ as widely as possible so as to pass on his genetic inheritance to a wide selection of progeny. Leaving aside the questions of whether he has ‘good’ seed and is doing a worthwhile thing and also how far physical appearance, which no doubt does come in large degree from genes, affects character in a sense more profound than that of Central Casting which is liable to impress on us the idea that physical appearance affects people’s nature, is this sperm donor onto a winning wicket? Perhaps, after all, genes are not the conduit, as he believed, to pass on character…

    Morphic Resonance in Mantras, Rituals and Festivals

    Summary of a talk by Rupert Sheldrake for Alternatives on 19th October 2022 at St James’s Church, Piccadilly

    Morphic Resonance (MR) is observable as a phenomenon rather than explained. There are theories about how it works and Sheldrake admits that most are speculative. David Bohm, for instance, thought that patterns work through a multi-dimensional universe. Most theories about all the Big Questions are speculative. Is the Big Bang theory demonstrable and, if so, were the evolutionary laws that govern everything all there from the start? Another now largely discredited theory is of a Cartesian view of the world. Do we exist in an inanimate universe in which only the Observable-By-Us exists? Have we come into it with consciousness unlike the rest of the universe? The crux question at the moment about MR is about whether or not it happens. Is it true?

    MR basically works by tuning into frequencies.  It works over time rather than physical space and matter, as Wittgenstein among others predicted.  All living beings are rhythmic. There is a resonance across time. Patterns are laid down and then experienced in communication with people from the past as much as to our own personal past.  Ideas circulate in the collective unconscious.

    If Morphic Resonance is a true picture of what is going on, all species, mankind included, have a collective memory. This idea has long been held in the East. There is much circumstantial evidence. Rats being ‘taught’ to perform certain tricks like navigating water mills were found to improve dramatically, becoming about ten times better at it. Rigorous experiments then showed that rats all round the world had improved at the same task to a like degree.

    There is evidence for MR in analysis of vibrations: vibrations are observable in diverse spheres, crystallisation for instance, and frequencies.  There is also evidence in terms of probability that has been gathered by asking wide selections of people questions and their answers demonstrate a degree of consistency that goes beyond the norms of probability. 

    Memories, it follows, are not stored in space but in time. The thinking in early work into for instance the genome assumed that genes were the key to character and identity; memory patterns on which we rely to make judgements are laid down in the brain and, also, that we perhaps could pass these altered genes down the generations.  If that was true where are the memory traces laid down in the brain?  One would expect to find some evidence of this and there is none.  When the brain dies, all memory traces should be wiped according to the old way of looking at things but it appears that there are traces of memory ‘left out’ over time that people pick up.  ‘Terminal Lucidity’ allowing sudden access even by Alzheimer’s Patients to memories previously ‘lost’ supports the idea that the brain can be compared to TV receptor equipment which can be faulty but is not the source of programmes.

    Epigenetics including much work on twins – who would be particularly subject to MR – now shows that inherited characteristics exist; but is it because of MR rather than genetic in origin?

    People connect with patterns especially when they are repeated. Similarity is a key. Rituals are essentially conservative and connect with the way people have done things before. The patterns we pick up are like habits that become ingrained. 

    The performance of ie ritual connects people with the past of their tribe or sects.

    MR is like living in a force field of vibration and frequency that must affect us.

    Endpiece comments

    There are several ways of assessing whether there is or may be anything in MR. Examples:

    • It is said frequently that there is a ‘power in houses’ and that one can think loftier thoughts in a cathedral whose very stones have been impregnated by the devotional ideas of the generations who have prayed by them.
    • It is also said albeit less commonly that a child is more like to resemble the man that a woman loves rather than the biologic.al father; if there is any truth in this observation, it may be a further illustration of MR.
    • People these days set much store by the lore of karma. If ‘what goes around comes around’ then the argument might run that this is logical in a world where thoughts and influences are sent out by people and are reflected back to them. People who believe in karma tend to set themselves up as judges of their actions and arrogate to themselves as opposed to an ‘outside’ Source the penance or reward their actions reap just as prelates talk confidently of the Word of the Almighty, speaking in His name.

    Benjamin Casteillo Personal Revelations

    Review: Your Brain is Boss by Dr Lynda Shaw

    Dr Lynda Shaw is a cognitive neuroscientist whose book Your Brain is Boss draws on scientific research to show how sensible ways of living our lives can be based on, and are explained by, our biological makeup. It is a self-help manual shot through with erudition, fascinating facts and wisdom. Dr Shaw challenges many taboos, often with pithy aphorism; she for instance debunks those who would scoff at the Unseen World by pointing out: ‘The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!’ Shaw brings scientific findings down to earth.
    Do you remember when you were at school and the teacher would tell you off for staring out of the window. Admonitions such as ‘Stop daydreaming and get on with your work!’ were often said but were foolhardy.
    It sounds homely, doesn’t it? Don’t bother about reflection! But, why does Shaw settle down for the charge?
    According to researchers Rani and Rao (1996) dreaming or slowing brain frequencies down to alpha is one of the most sensible things you can do to improve attention, and Sobolewski and colleagues (2011) show that this will also help you gain greater emotional control….Sara Lazar at Harvard Medical School found that after people meditated daily for eight weeks, several areas of the brain changed resulting in an increase in memory, resilience, compassion and empathy. This all follows a run-down of alpha, beta, theta, gamma and delta waves, solid science underpinning the theory.
    Time and again, vignettes about daily incidents in life highlight pointers about thinking in patterns that accord with a modern perspective. It is for instance remarked on elsewhere in this website that humour can play a key part in defusing over-tense situations, with good health spin-offs, with some Indian cults enjoining a hearty belly laugh before settling down to a session of meditation. This may be true in terms of personal experience but why is it so? Shaw goes into the neural biology:
    A network of cortical and sub-cortical structures in the brain are involved in processing the surprising incongruity that leads to laughter. These areas include the temporo-occipito-parietal regions. Add to this the structures in the brain which are involved in reward attention and memory and it shows that a lot of the brain is involved when we are having fun.
    There is so much meat, so much entertainment, in the book that it is almost a matter of opinion as to whether it is of more use to scientists starting off in their speciality or for psychiatrists and life-coaches suggesting ways of attaining a rounded, better perspective. The advantages of thinking quietly on one’s own, namely reflection, emotional intelligence - Self-awareness is the first step to improving emotional intelligence - or forming useful habits that increase the likelihood of success or thinking long and hard and with pleasure about what it is that matters to the reader. It follows as common sense that decision-making skills are enhanced by reflection. The book is a counter-blast to those who choose to ignore the deeper qualities like intuition that are inherent in us all because they can defy crystalised explanation.
    Insight is a deep understanding followed by suddenly seeing a pattern and the realisation of what the answer is.
    So, what is going on with intuition and how can science explain it? It is gone into in detail in the book, which is science to underpin the confidence of those who wish live a life to the full. What ups the game in Your Brain is Boss is detailed research spiced up in an extremely readable style. Buy Your Brain is Boss by Dr Lynda Shaw

    Reflection: its practical purposes

    Don’t you want to be more rounded, successful and clever. Of course you do!  Everything in this institute tends in this direction if you have half a mind to take it seriously. Our way of life will be enhanced in a practical sense if we allow ourselves the chance of more reflection.

    We need not take anything for granted and, by questioning things, our own beliefs included, people can come up with new ideas, new theories; better ideas, better theories. We can bring them to bear on our careers, our political systems, our decisions in romance. We can adjust tactics, and strategy and much more, in the process transforming our lives.

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