Many of us like to think, or at least an increasing number of people among the Millennial generation, that the world’s most prominent and mainstream scientists have the best knowledge and perspective on the reality of life, why we are here, whats our purpose and even, the origin of consciousness.

Increasing numbers of individuals in western society, see these scientists, with their impressive Phd’s, platforms to communicate hard to understand science and Astro-Physics concepts and charismatically and successfully critique the obvious failings of fundamentalist religion, as the most ‘fit’ persons to help us understand the nature of reality. And to be fair, because of Western Sciences’ success in helping us understand the nature of the physical world and the wonderful conveniences science has brought us, we do owe them, at least a little of our ear.

But there comes a point when we begin to hold on to physical and scientific explanations of the world and nature of reality to tightly, and when we do this we miss so much of the bigger picture and even become more alike the medieval Christian charlatans or Islamic Extremists that atheists love to mock and ridicule (hell we all do). Yes, what we have done is traded fundamentalist religion for fundamentalist science and the worst part of all, is most people are unaware of it. These are the consequences of being overly and blindly dogmatic and choosing to perceive the world from a one-sided perspective.

Growing up in the midwest, I got to know a lot of Christian fundamentalists and one of the characteristics they all shared was a complete inability to think multi-dimensionally and outside their own experience. What is multi-dimensional thinking? It is thinking and looking at the world from more perspectives and lenses than just one. It requires a degree of empathy and the ability to look at the bigger picture. Today I have come to see that this absence of multi dimensional thinking is not just shared by overly religious people, but by many, many other people of all backgrounds as well, even the people and famous figures who we consider absurdly intelligent.

We listen to mainstream scientists tell us, ‘there’s no evidence behind the UFO phenomenon,’ there’s no evidence behind the paranormal phenomena’ and on and on and on. If they can’t get it to follow a strict set of rules in their lab or more importantly, it infringes on their world view, then its not true to them and thus, its not true for all of us. I say it becomes not true for all of us because we will live in a world today where its science and materialism that are dominant.

We live in a time where its mainstream science that has the highest authority on truth and the largest audience to hear their versions of ‘truth.’ And in having the highest authority, it is being used to drown out very important happenings regarding metaphysical experiences. Before I go further, it is vital to reiterate that the purpose is not to paint a picture of modern western science being inherently bad and the proponents at its head as bad people, obviously that isn’t true but this arrogance, ignorance and lack of multi-dimensional thinking that exists in materialism science needs to be tackled and addressed thoroughly.

The truth is and it probably goes without saying, Richard Dawkins, Neil Degrasses Tyson, Sam Harris and Sean Carrol are all pretty intelligent guys and probably have IQ scores to back that up. A lot of people would take and interpret this as a way of saying, hey, their smarter and have ‘better’ working brains than most of us so that means they are best equipped and their perspectives and opinions on ‘X subject’ hold more weight and merit than the rest of us. This is a simple fallacy and a trap of thinking that many of us fall into as a consequence of living in a society with a strong darwinian narrative. We tend to see the biggest, fastest and strongest as ‘superior’ in all facets of life but looking at life this way does not always serve us well.

On another note, it is also fairly well known common sense that sometimes the smartest geniuses and prodegies in the world tend to extremely excel at one thing but lack in other areas. I tend to think the worlds most prestigious mainstream scientists lack in empathetical and multi-dimensional thinking. They ignore everything that cant be proven in a lab or seen and detected with a certified scientific instrument. They preach that subjective experience cannot be counted as evidence and look at the world completely through what they can prove objectively, well how does that make sense when it is subjective experience alone that we come to learn and know anything in this world!

There is no way around it, experience is the catalyst for wisdom and authentic knowing, During my undergrad studies, the term armchair anthropologist’ was thrown around to refer to people who study and claim to understand a culture but never directly travelled to the place where the particular culture is practiced. They could tell you how many people lived in whatever country and whatever city and how many people spoke a certain language and practiced a certain religion but the reality of it was every other antrhopoloigst knew that they didnt know squat.

And of course many can relate to hearing about the countless travelers and adventurers who after returning home from a trip abroad they will say, they learned more about the world in a couple months than they did during four years of college. We understand that one persons story or report alone does not prove or disprove something but all subjective experience cannot be totally discounted.

The only characteristics an individual needs to discover the truth of something, is a logical, reasonable and open mind that is able and willing to investigate from multiple angles. A true scientist, detective or reseacher will not ignore all of people’s personal and subjective experiences. They wont ignore them because its logical to listen to them.

To put this in perspective I will lay out a simple, down to earth and perhaps, cheesy story to try and get this across. Lets say you live in some midwestern state in the US and someone who lives next door, someone you have known for years and trust very well, says they saw a grey wolf in the nearby woods the other day while taking a walk. You think to yourself, ‘well that is impossible, there havent been any grey wolf populations in your state and county for decades, maybe even a hundred years. He probably just saw a really large coyote and nothing else.’

That would be a pretty logical explanation and thinking but then you remember that your neighbor is an experienced outdoorsman and hunter who grew up in montana, and hes very familiar with animals and predators that exist in north America. You would most likely think at this point, ‘Hmm that is interesting, maybe i should keep an eye out the next time i take a walk in the woods but its still probably a large coyote.’ The next few weeks, more of your neighbors say they saw a very large four-legged predator roaming the woods or crossing the road in front of their cars late at night on their way home from work. They tell you they have never seen a coyote that big in their life or with that kind of color. Finally another person local to your town, who is from the Department of Natural resources in your state, claims they saw it and says it defiantly was a grey wolf but they were unable to obtain a photograph because it ran away to quickly.

What do you think at this point? Well it is true, you personally never saw it and because no photo was taken, no footprints were seen, it is impossible to say for sure whether or not a grey wolf came through your town and state, but can you totally discount what your neighbor and others claim they saw? I believe the logical and most senseful conclusion to draw from the situation would be that it deserves more investigation.

Yet the truth is we have this exact situation when we look at say, UfO and paranormal phenonmena. Not only do we have an incredible amount of credible witnesses but we have ‘footprints’ to go along with it (quality objective evidence.) Yet the oh so smart individuals on the high horse of mainstream science say its not worth a look…

The problem solving scientific mindset is extremely useful but it cannot be relied on alone, in all situations to solve a problem. Sometimes it is beneficial to turn off the mind part completely. While this might seem to be a bit woo woo for many, intuition, if you want to call it, can be a powerful source of knowing when trusted and acted upon. Eastern philosophers and prophets have known for a very long time that clarity and knowing and truth comes in moments of silence and when the mind is devoid of thinking. It is not the problem solving mindset that always bring about a solution or an epiphany, some times its in moments of surrender, meditation or just regular dull moments of life, when the universe will suddenly drop something on you that flips everything you thought you knew on its head. Does one really want to employ critical thinking before a first date or is being relaxed and open a more sensable approach?

Many Geniuses throughout human history, including Einstein, have known this. Don’t get me wrong, a well orchestrated anayltical and objective mind is a great tool and attribute to have but relying on it totally and overthinking is not. Overthinking is notorious for getting people in trouble in all areas of life and it is no different in the realm of problem solving. Mainstream science promotes a strict adherence to using anything but an objective problem solving mindset, as long as we as a society stick to that principle, we will be stuck in a rigid way of seeing the world that could distract us from seeing the obvious.

The UFO, paranormal phenomena, along with near death experiences and others, these subjects fall into a category that I would call metaphysical phenomena, and its these experiences that contradict the materialist paradigm and mainstream sciences’ view of the world.

A very important aspect to note is this; A lot of us forget that most of these scientists have no interest or experience in these phenomena and occurrences. These things are completely beyond their own consciousness. They think its all a bunch of bologny from the get-go or it is something simply not interesting and worth finding out more about. These subjects have been so successfully chastised that many people forget that not all of the stories about ‘what goes bump in the night’ are the products of delusional individuals or people seeking fame and fortune.

Everyday ordinary human being have and are having experiences that on the surface dont make a lot of rational sense and instead of condemning all these people as lunatics and liars, we need to dive deeper and really attempt to figure out what is going on. It is a very prevalent view nowadays that the belief in a supernatural force or ‘God’ came from our human cognitive capability to ponder our own existence and our inability to understand the physical processes that happen all around us. While that view does have strong intellectual appeal, it is not suffienct enough to explain the widespread persistence of spirituality throughout human history. It doesn’t account for the main driving force behind religions all around the world which in my opinion, are miracles and experiences that defy the rationale.

One has to do some independent research and critically consider, are all these reported mircales, metaphysical experiences, etc that have been reported since the dawn of humanity, bullshit? Are all of these people who report what they have seen or experienced, lying, mistaken, hallucinating, what ever? The more research one does on the prevalence of the seemingly bizzare and unknown, the more it is made clear that modern science is really missing a piece of the puzzle when it comes to the nature of reality.

There is just way to many credible people and incredible stories in which many former skeptics are involved and using critical thinking it becomes outrageous to dismiss them all as pure bogus. Cases and material that really nail this on the head for me personally, are Pam Reynold’s and Eben Alexander’s near death experiences, Susan Giezemann’s mediumship and Stanton Friendmans numerous books and work on the UFO phenomena. I encourage anyone who is not familiar with these subjects to look into those.

One of my favorite explorers who is actually much more well known as an author, Michael Critchon (author of the Andromenda Strain) writes about paranormal and spiritual phenomena in his book, “Travels.” This book (while also about experiences travelling the world) is another testament and credible source that attests to reality of mainstream sciences ignorance regarding these subjects. Michael Critchon (GodSpeed to him) to me represents, a true explorer because he not only used critical and multi-dimensional thinking but he made discoveries by making himself the guinea pig and rat.

We are told over and over again that the scientific method is the one and only pathway to uncovering the mysteries of our world and materialism (or ‘naturalism’) as the charismatic physicist Sean Carol calls it, is the one and true reality. I love the scientific method and it has served humanity greatly in making discoveries and technological advances in the last 500+ years, and I believe we must use it to assess and analyze metaphysical phenomena. But it has to be expanded upon and we must add in logic and formal reasoning to our tool kit of discovery. Its easy to see the flaws in looking through the scientific methodology lense alone when trying to solve a problem.

For instance, how confused the average American citizen must be in todays age when it comes to diet and nutrition when you look at all the conflicting information out there about what is healthy eating and proper nutrition. The Ketosis fanatics now claim fat is a better fuel than glucose, the vegans claim that all animal products are inherently unhealthy and the Paleo people claim that gluten is the cause of pretty much every modern disease. They all debate each other and they will throw out various scientific studies supporting their diets and the other side will throw out studies that support theirs. When paleo people say vegan diets are all malnutrious, then how the hell is Rich Roll winning IRonmans and Rip Esselystnn thriving on a plant based diet? And then on the other side, the oh so popular documentary ‘What the health’ says eating eggs for breakfast everyday is the same as smoking cigarettes…I mean if one is trying to solve this issue through a scientific lense alone, you are bown to go crazy with all the contradictions. I personally have experience with feeling confused in this department and I eventually came to see that the whole debate and argument is useless because when you stop thinking about it scientifically, it naturally comes down to the logical conclusion that there is not one specific diet that works for every person! Again, trusting intuition can be valuable. I stopped reading the studies and reports that told me what was healthy to eat and instead I did a personal experiment on myself to see what foods and nutrients agreed with me. The results did not entirely agree with mainstream scientific knowledge or any other fad diet. This was just one of many experiments that installed in me the value of obtaining knowledge by direct subjective experience.

Sometimes subjective experience agrees precisely with common, well-credited objective knowledge and other times it can certainly agree with less popular and less credited but nonetheless, studied objective knowledge.  Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer, Sam Harris and pals, call themselves soldiers of reason, how ironic this is when they’re completely blind to their own unreasonable modes of thinking. Is it reasonable to dismiss hundreds of qualified military pilots and personnel when they report to have seen aircraft that have supposedly defied the laws of physics? And even more so, combined with the large amount of tangable physical evidence (radar detections, equiptment malfunctions, video and IR recordings, etc) that goes along with these reports? And is it reasonable to dismiss all near-death experiences as products of a brain in shock when there are cases of people who have been blind their whole life yet nonetheless are able to describe the scene of their accidents in near perfect detail? (Not aware of these cases? thats the exact problem!) And does it make sense to label a former materialist skeptic and neurosurgeon who reported he had an ultra real experience and conscious awareness while he was in a coma and had his neocortex (the part of the brain ‘believed to give rise to conscious experience) completely shut down by a bacterial menengitus, a fraud?

 

Modern mainstream science simply has lost its ability to think openly and reasonably and because of it we as a society are missing out on such a richer picture of reality than most know. I am not saying I know everything about these issues or that there aren’t any looneys in the field of paranormal and ufo research but there is enough going on in these departments that they need desperate attention and investigation. It is not right for the majority of society to be shut out from potential revelations that could change the way humanity sees it self forever, just because of the arrogance of a few stubborn scientists with colorful charisma’s and Phd’s behind their names.

Multi-dimensional thinking, thinking emphatically and a looser attachment to dogmatic philosophies are just some of the traits our society will need to come to realize a more true picture of the universe and to shed light on areas of research that have tragically and mistakenly been labeled ‘Pseudo-science.

 

-Bryce