The Realization That Together We Dream the World

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines the term “radical” as “marked by a considerable departure from the usual or traditional.”  In our modern world, the “usual or traditional” takes many forms, including “what most people think,” “what you grew up believing,” “what your religious teachers say,” or, on a grander scale, the governing scientific worldview.   It is my premise that the governing scientific worldview underlies and propells all other beliefs.  It is the foundation from which the other fields flow, from politics and economics to medicine and cosmology.  So if we want to truly change the world, we must change it at the root, we must shake the foundation, and then see how the other fields change to align with this new way of thinking.

So what is the “governing scientific worldview?”   It is simply the belief that a massive world of matter, composed of tiny little particles, exists independently of human consciousness.  This independent world arose on its own power, with no help from the mind, in an event known as the big bang.  From this random and wild explosion, the mindless force of gravity molded the scattering particles into stars, planets, and other celestial bodies.  Then, through processes that no one completely understands, these mechanical forces of nature formed the planet Earth, and then the oceans, continents, mountain ranges, and the entire landscape we call Mother Nature.  Last, the particles left over from big bang somehow crossed the infinite gulf from inanimate to animate, from death to life, and began to struggle for existence.  And these particles not only became alive, but somehow acquired the ability to reproduce and pass on their life-forms to descendants which then continued the struggle.  But in the reproductive process, the copying process was not always perfect, and so errors arose.  Usually these copying errors would lead to disaster, but periodically, the mutations would improve upon the original living form, which then held on to the favorable trait and built upon it.  After hundreds of millions of years, organisms with traits favorable for survival out-lived their weaker competitors and spread throughout the globe.  Through this process of natural selection, with nothing other than survival doing the selecting, the early simple life-forms gradually evolved into the vast living world we see today, with human beings apparently sitting on top of the evolutionary tree.

This is the story modern science tells us.  It is a story written in high school and college textbooks, taught in all of the world’s schools and universities, and accepted by virtually all credentialled scientists.

The problem with the story, however, is that it is dead wrong.

It is that last sentence that is radical, and it gets worse from here.  So if you are not ready for a radical departure from the conventional story, read no farther.

So we must do something truly radical, and perhaps a bit ambitious.  We must uproot this mechanical worldview and replace it with something more in line with reality; we must accept the truth that there is only one way for a world like ours to exist, and that is as a dream; a projection of inner states; an illusion in which we are so deeply imbedded that we forgot we are the source of the illusion.

In this blog and others, I plan to reproduce excerpts from my book, The Collapse of Materialism: Visions of Science, Dreams of God which outlines the argument in favor of this new worldview.  

Introduction to The Collapse of Materialism: Visions of Science, Dreams of God

Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Albert Einstein

When future historians write the chronicle of our age, they will tell the story of a people rising to the realization that together they dream the world. This realization—or enlightenment—will start slowly and then gain momentum as the evidence supporting it builds and other explanations for the world begin to fade away. As the realization grows, it will mark the beginning of a new world, one that reflects humankind’s highest dream: a people united in body and in spirit. This new world will be joined together by a higher truth, a transcendent purpose, a unified way of thinking that connects our souls with the galaxies spiraling high above in the distant cosmos.

This is the story of a people growing up believing that they live in a material world where Mother Nature radiates such grandeur and power that only some almighty external force—the big bang or God—could possibly be responsible for it.

Through the ages the story unfolds, as people raise their eyes to the heavens, wondering by what miracle a world of such deep solidity and order stands before them. At the same time, a group of logical, hard-minded thinkers, taking nothing on faith, adopt the view that they must reason and experiment their way to the truth; scientific methods must prove theories correct or they have no validity.

But the appeal to God and the search for scientific truth lead to no unified theory; religion and science exist in different realms, and the two seldom communicate using the same language.

Without a unifying law for humankind, we wind up competing against those who act, look, or pray differently than we do. As the most severe sign of ignorance, some people kill innocent others in the name of God and trumpet the achievement to their blind followers.

This practice cannot go on, as someday we will come to understand that a greater purpose joins us. But the only way to achieve true unity is for a critical mass of people to acknowledge an overriding principle that transcends the historical belief systems that have led us here. This principle must reorient science, philosophy, and religion toward a higher plane, but the principle cannot be an abstraction or a vaguely expressed feeling. The unity principle must be accepted as both a scientific and philosophical truth; it must create a new scientific paradigm while satisfying the soul-deep yearnings and soaring aspirations of religion.

This unity must yield a worldview more coherent and logical than what modern material science or Darwinism offers. It must blend philosophical insights with the empirical facts of science; it must drive toward the final scientific revolution because it will explain more with fewer assumptions—the truth that remains after all opposing theories fall away.

And so we gradually ascend to the truth: We are the creators in a universe issued from the soul, bursting from the core of the one Mind, not from a big bang or the hand of a heavenly father. Instead, the truth stands in front of us: We are the one mind, and we are dreaming this world. We are God, and we, with infinite dreaming power, have dreamed a world of such overwhelming power and solidity that we have fooled ourselves into thinking we are not dreaming. We are indeed a young God. Like a God-child, we imagine that the outside world we see—the stars in the sky, the trees in the forest, fields of grass, winding roads, and other people—exist independently of our beings, as if we are moviegoers watching the world go by on a big screen. Detached from the world we create, we pull back from taking full responsibility for our dream home.

This book challenges the material science worldview, which holds that far from being a dream, our world is actually a giant machine composed of tiny mindless particles operating on their own power with no care for mind or soul. This worldview controls how we look at the world and how we act in the world. It is based upon the great assumption that an entire universe of matter exists outside of the mind and beyond the mind’s control. As I describe in the chapters that follow, when we dispense with this unnecessary assumption, we find the key to unlock the explanation for why we are here.

It is time finally to answer this question, so that we can get on with the vital task of making this home of ours a truly better and more peaceful place for all the world’s people. It is time to set our sights on the only goal that will unify us, a goal that shines silently overhead in a place at the end of science that we will someday know to be heaven.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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