What Does Science Say?

These ideas are taken from an article written by Elizabeth Harris, author and researcher in Spirituality and Spiritualism, who wrote Spiritualism...A Way of Life.

Professor Candace Pert, Rutgers University: "As a scientist I believe we're going to understand everything one day, but this understanding will require bringing in a realm we don't understand at all yet. We're going to have to bring in the extra-energy realm, the realm of spirit and soul......."  For the growing number of modern scientists who have moved to the view that the whole universe is 'a cosmic dance of energy', and that it could be a 'thought world' moves the heart of a modern Spiritualist.

Modern scientists such as David Bohm say that the universe is essentially an indivisible whole. The material visible world is but the surface or outer layer of an invisible order. Mind or consciousness belongs to an underlying, psychic order and is the cause of matter rather than (the effect) or emerging from it, as was previously thought.

In July, 1982, an article in Science Digest speaks of Sir James Jean's book the 'Mysterious Universe'. Jean foresaw that science was headed toward a belief in 'a non-mechanical reality' - that the universe begins to look more like a 'great thought' than a 'great machine'. Scientists are beginning to suspect that they out to hail 'mind' as the creator of matter. People who still say that the mind is simply a matter of brain function or that matter is the sole and ultimate reality are wholly out of touch with modern physics.

The biologist, Adolf Portmann, in his book 'New Pathways to Biology', says: "No amount of research along physical or chemical lines can ever give us a full picture of psychological, spiritual or intellectual processes".

Noted Canadian neurosurgeon, Dr. Wilder Penfield, pointed out, "The mind is distinct and different essence from the body altogether." He goes on to say: "The physical basis of the mind is the brain action in each individual. It accompanies the activity of his spirit."

Marie-Louise von Franz, a disciple of Carl Jung, has concluded from her studies that there is another realm beyond this natural world and says: "Modern physics has begun to speak about universes with which we cannot communicate". In her book 'On Dreams and Death' von Franz has a chapter on the 'subtle' or astral body. She says that each person has not just a physical body, but also a subtle body which survives death. This body has several names - a spiritual body, a sidereal or 'star' body - made up of a finer, more intense 'energy' than the physical body.

As physicists now see material made up of a 'cosmic dance of energy', von Franz says that the 'psychic energy' of the soul or mind-spirit may underlie all three aspects, our mind, subtle body and physical body.  She goes on to say: "The subtle body would then be a form of the psyche that would remain close to the body but would also possess a certain minimal mass and extension in time-space.

Since, in modern physics, mass is no longer associated with a material substance, but by particles which are but bundles of energy, the idea of a body that is transformed into an intensity which is no longer visible in space and time becomes a rational concept. This new way of scientific thinking offers a new rational approach to paranormal phenomena."

Psychologists research emotional and behaviour responses to light and color as well as their healing qualities.  But, scientists are now aware of energies more subtle than light.

The modern physicist, Fritjof Capra, has studied vast fields of energies of other frequencies, which not only underlie our own, but interlock with it. There are many dimensions of reality going on simultaneously around us, he admits.

Professor Bernard Grad spent 35 years as a biologist researcher in McGill University, Montreal, proving that the laying-on of hands cures illnesses. He was convinced of a strong power in and around us, a kind of bio-energy which flows from God and is caused by Him.

A few scientists such as Dr. Grad, Teilhard de Chardin as well as Einstein realized that it was impossible to understand modern science without thinking of religion. For, modern science fuels religious thoughts.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his book 'The Mysteries of Science' made this quite clear. He pointed out that the study of energy resources in the past was confined to coal, oil and uranium, but scientists now were considering the vast energy resources of spiritual, mental and psychic energies.  For Teilhard, love, divine (God and human, is the inexhaustible source of energy. He wrote about the prominent place of love in human evolution. He likened it to fire, which can stand for warmth and light as well as for the fusion and transformation of the other elements.

Albert Einstein viewed science on a very large scale. For Einstein, science was a matter of spiritual vocation, a response to an inner call, a spiritual path. For him it concerned itself with the nature of the physical world as well as the fate of man.

Moreover, modern scientists are only now discovering 'energies' - 'astral bodies' - 'the power of the mind' that ...have been known about for a long time. Will they soon discover the spirit world as Spiritualism knows it?

Just some scientific thoughts to add to your spiritual knowledge.