It is natural for people to be skeptical of things for which they have no proof. We cannot blame those who do not believe in spirits (or ghosts), UFOs or ETs, elementals and other strange phenomena if they have not encountered any of these. I myself would not believe them if I had not personally seen them.
But to conclude that these creatures or phenomena could not possibly exist because one has not seen or encountered them is to engage in faulty or illogical reasoning. For no one can possibly experience everything in our phenomenal universe.
Besides, not everybody is developed enough or equipped with the necessary mental and spiritual faculties needed to experience them. Not everybody is sensitive or clairvoyant enough to see things that are not ordinarily seen by the average person.
Feared, admired
Throughout human history, those who have special abilities to see the unseen, foretell the future, or to interpret dreams have been either feared or admired by majority of the population. Some consider them to be dangerous to society.
During the infamous Inquisition instituted by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, these special people were accused of being in league with the devil or engaged in witchcraft, and were either tortured or burned at the stakes— like what the Church did to Joan of Arc, with sanction from the Pope.
Today, such gifted people with special psychic powers are no longer physically harmed. But they are ridiculed, made fun of, or else confined in mental hospitals.
Not only religious bias, dogmatism or fanaticism is to be blamed for this attitude toward people with extraordinary mental powers or abilities. Materialist science is also responsible for such an attitude.
Mainstream science believes that only matter, or those which can be perceived by our physical senses or observed by scientific instruments, are considered real or true. Everything else is not real.
Limitless
That’s why, for modern science, spirits don’t exist. Souls don’t exist. Even the mind or consciousness doesn’t exist apart from the brain.
By limiting the definition of what is real to what can be seen, heard, smelled, touched and tasted by the senses, we cut off our knowledge of reality to a very limited extent. But what is unseen or invisible is much more vast and extensive than what is visible or can be seen. It is limitless!
From the beginning, mainstream science was never meant to study or investigate nonphysical or spiritual phenomena. It doesn’t have the tools or methodology to look beyond the purely physical or material world.
Because of its great success in elucidating or explaining the physical world, scientists and people in general, tend to believe that everything can be explained by science—if not now, then eventually.
Quantum mechanics
But this can only happen if scientists are willing to change their methodology or paradigm to include the study of nonphysical phenomena. This means revising or accepting other criteria for proving or validating the reality or existence of things.
The emerging science of quantum mechanics or particle physics is forcing scientists to see things from entirely new and unheard-of perspectives. The world of matter is no longer viewed as fixed, deterministic and definite as established by classical Newtonian physics, which has dominated scientific thinking for the last 400 years.
To understand what’s happening in the smallest particles of matters, or in the subatomic levels, they are forced to change their beliefs about what this world is made of. According to quantum physics, nothing is certain. All things are just probabilities until they are observed or measured.
Observation somehow changes reality. But this is what the old Buddhist religion has been saying all along. This world is our mental creation. Everything is “maya”—or illusion!
Some quantum physicists are beginning to talk like Eastern mystics, and Eastern mystics are beginning to sound more like quantum physicists.
Questions and comments are welcome. The next Soulmates, Karma and Reincarnation seminar will be held on June 22, 1-7 p.m., room 308 Prince Plaza 1 Condominium, Legazpi St. Makati. E-mail jaimetlicauco@yahoo.com; tel. 8107245 or 0998-9886292