“I must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter”. – Max Planck (German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.)
What’s at the Core of Relational Being?
I’d like to start by repeating the story of what led me here. The pivotal moment occurred during a training where I had the experience of knowing something I could only have known psychically.
Here’s the scenario. I was in a group of three people, one of whom held a card from which she shared three pieces of information about an individual whom she didn’t personally know. In that instance, David, a male living in Devon, UK. My task, using techniques we had been schooled in over three days, was to detect the illness that David was affected by.
For background, I should say that I was raised as a rationalist and atheist, was scientifically trained and had no belief whatsoever in my ability to succeed. For ten minutes or so I was proving that expectation brilliantly, completely blank, whatever technique I used.
Then the third person in the group, who was there to remind me of the tools, suggested that I try the “space helmet technique”. What this meant was visualising that I had put David’s head over my own in order to feel his reality. So, eyes closed, I imagined and mimed that action.
The effect was dramatic. Instantly I had a sensation at the back of my head, left side. I tilted my head and screwed up the left side of my face as if in pain. The words came from my mouth without apparent thought “Does he have a brain tumour?” I was told that this was what the card said.
Why Am I Telling You This?
This is not really about me – certainly not in the sense of some special ability. Some others on the training were also detecting information about their subject individuals. But it is about what it caused in my world, and where it has led over the four decades since.
My reality back then was full of scientific knowledge. I knew enough about physics and biology to recognise that what I had done was impossible in those terms. And yet it had happened in a quite visceral and undeniable way. No blinding lights, no voice from the heavens; you might say that it was almost mundane. At another level it was quite the opposite, a bolt of lightning through my relationship with the world, and quite irreversible. What I had been taught was evidently not the whole truth.
Of course, science still works. My phone does the same things that yours can do and there are satellites orbiting the earth so that I could share a video call with you tomorrow. At the same time, scientific knowledge has an apparent gap. I would like to share what I have learned about that gap, because it is fundamental; it’s as if we have a wonderful map, but are holding it upside-down, or squinting through the paper from the other side.
What Should the Map Look Like?
An obvious question follows – what does the map look like from the right side? The answer is surprisingly simple, but no less challenging for that. It demands that we see ourselves and the world very differently.
The normal view – the one that we are taught in school, the one that runs through philosophy, physics, medicine and psychology – sees reality as material. Even though humans have spiritual or emotional experiences, atoms and cells are at the centre. Quantum theory and relativity operate on the fringes of that material-centred view, but even though we know that matter is formed from energy and that quantum-level events are uncertain, the results are presented in a frame of material outcomes.
None of that view adequately explains the world as it really is. This leads to many of the effects that we don’t want, from ecosystems damage and climate change to economic fragility and socio-political challenges. And it certainly falls short of the ability to describe human spiritual experience, often consigning it to a kind of waste-bin of faulty brain function. It has no way to deal with psychic experience in any form. It would reject my story as either a delusion or an outright lie. If that is your view, unless you are curious about where I am going, reading any further will be pointless.
The alternative view places matter in second place. This is consistent with relativity in that it recognises that all matter is formed from energy. But E=MC2 only tells us about quantities of energy and matter. It doesn’t tell us about form and shape, nor about how they behave and why they change. What informs (or in-forms) that?
“The stuff of the world is mind-stuff.” – Arthur Eddington, 1917
What’s in First Place?
Information. In-form-ation. That is to say, there is something which governs the shapes that energy takes when it becomes matter. That something has continuity. It becomes retained knowledge. It begins at the most basic level of sub-atomic particles. It continues to govern and hold the memory of everything that follows from the formation of atoms and molecules to biological entities. It is present in all that exists and around all that exists.
I can justify those statements in terms of all other scientific understanding. I have done so in depth and at length.* But for now, I ask you to just accept it and see where it leads and what that implies for who we are, our place in creation, and how massively we might benefit from that understanding.
Our entire relationship with the universe shifts when we grasp the implications. It’s not a human-centric perspective though. Far from it. The relationship of everything in the universe with everything else also alters because nothing is outside of the connectedness. Everything exists and functions in connection to everything else. It may be familiar to many for there to be talk of “oneness” as a potential human experience. However, the usual presentation of that has been for it to be viewed as a psychological phenomenon, something that takes place in human consciousness, maybe because such experiences have often been accessed through meditation or psychedelic substances. That makes them seem like a special state.
In contrast, a fully connected universe, independent of human experiencing, presents us with a oneness that is not dependent on us. We are not special. The philosophical question that asks whether the universe continues to exist when I am no longer there to see it was always somewhat foolish and self-centred. When the tree falls in the forest, the sound it makes is witnessed by the forest and the mycorrhiza experience the change. The universe does not depend on us in any way at all. Get over it!
Where Are We Headed?
This article is the first in a series of explorations that will delve into the implications of an indivisible and active information field. I will:
unpack how it affects human choices both personally and collectively
look at what it means for our biology, our physiological and our mental health
explore the implications for our societal systems such as our ways with money
show how it has affected evolution and development
open questions of how we move away from a fixed and over-deterministic view of genetics
enquire into the significance for our spiritual frameworks and our relationship to the “divine” realms
open into the nature of activity and creative co-creation that becomes possible when we are actively and relationally engaged with the flow of the information field
present implications which empower us in new ways to live, bringing connectedness into our daily existence. Oneness is not a mystical experience but a place from which to live.
The overarching effect of the materialist view that dominates Western society has been that we regard ourselves and others as things. What if you were to think of yourself as a verb rather than a noun? What fresh perspective and living dynamics would that enable? What if we saw Being as something that we are as well as something that we do?
The psychic experience I described is a single drop in the ocean of what becomes possible when we live into connectedness. This article is only an introduction to a vast arena of exploration, a journey which will have to be taken step by step. If you are curious about this new territory, please follow or subscribe wherever you see this so that more is presented to you. You can see some indications of what is to come on my Relational Being website.
*Those who are instantly curious about the science might like to read my book The Science of Possibility: Patterns of Connected Consciousness. It’s on Amazon, Kindle and most other places you might expect to find it.
Resources:
If you are looking for Organisational Development support, including Team and Leadership Development, there is information here. Click the button for an introductory call.
Information about my books can be found on www.spiralworld.net or as follows:
The Science of Possibility: Patterns of Connected Consciousness
Your Access to Possibility: 7 Amazingly Simple Success Keys to Creating Your Life Consciously
7-Stage Parenting: How to Meet your Child's Changing Needs
Reinventing Capitalism: How We Broke Money and How We Fix it, From Inside and Out