The Dichotomy between Phsyics and Metaphsyics

Half a century ago I graduated out of high school, fully indoctrinated, into a scientific environment that is firmly set on an empirical course, proposing a dioctrine which argues that everything in existence has a physiological explanation - that if some of the more subtle mysteries of the cosmos are not yet fully understood, given time, science will come up with a definitive answer. In short, my mindset at the time of graduation was more or less identical to most the people who have commented on all the philosophical forums I am registered on. IE if humans can not see it, taste, smell it, touch it or hear it, it does not exist. My education trained me to scoff at the supernatural claims of religion and sent me into spiritless life without its moral guidance.

Around my middle age, after a successful career as television producer. I became interested in trying to plumb the deeper mysteries of the invisible metaphysical forces that surround all of us. IE; love, hate, anger, guilt, stupidly, genius, courage, cowardice and a host of other very real emotional effects have direct impact on our state of mind, and on our conduct - towards ourself and those around us. These were real life mysteries which my scientific teaching in school had failed to address - and which my largely agnostic and atheistic community could not provide the reassuring and comforting answers that I needed at male menopause. The "Jesus only son of God" tirade coming from church pulpits offended me. The Christian message of love for neighbot, accompanied by bombing all and sundry was hypocritical. so I sought no help from that direction.

At forty years of age I did not know if I had ever really experienced genuine love for anybody, including myself and my society - our how to evoke it. I knew that I had experienced anger, joy, envy, admiration, jealousy etc. etc. but had no way of measuring the depth of those experiences. I wondered why some people wrote profound poetry and psalms. I did not know why I could not sing in tune, or paint elegant pictures like my brother or dance with the rhythm of an aborigine. The promise of answers from science that I received in school, had yet to explain why any of these life forces and natural abilities existed. My society as a whole seemed intent, via its lock on empiricism, on continuing to avoid any attempt to look inward itself.

So I decided to set out and do my own personal research on the meaning of my life. I went into the desert and lived with the Kalahari Bushmen.

The San are our original ancestors who still lived (at that time) an uncontaminated Stone Age existence. I found that the central social interest in their life, was not the physical science of survival via hunting and gathering, but in personal, social and spiritual integrity. By puberty they were all masters at basic survival. The ingenuity and craftsmanship of their traps, snares, weapons, tools; and their extensive knowledge of edible and medicinal plants, and the behavior of the animals they hunted was extra-ordinary. But the central interest in their lives was Animism - the superstitious belief that Nature was a soul - a conscious entity that rewarded the hunt and punished trespass. This uncontested belief guided their social behavior and was taught to children as soon as they were weaned. Instead of the skull-bashing ignorant louts we generally assign to our Stone Age ancestors, I found a highly intelligent, sharing caring people that were filled with the simple joys of life. loved singing and dancing and Rock art, smoked cannabis on occasion and went into altered states of spiritual consciousness.

The fact that spirituality not physical survival was the inspirational drive of our prehistoric ancestors, and that trespass on the divinity of Nature was entirely taboo and considerate family relationships a fundamental teaching of their children, is a basic human behavioral reality that science continues to remain largely unaware of. And so would I if I had not gone to find out for myself.

From that family base of human behavior, I moved on investigating each succeeding complex social contract that followed after the Stone Age, visiting and living with 3rd World Bronze Age agricultural clans and Iron Age national industrialists groups that still practiced ancient cultural traditions - finding out as I went that as mankind mastered the physical sciences of each succeeding Age paradigm, that mastery was accompanied by a corresponding focus on the type of spiritual practice that provided ethical guidance to individual and and group relationships.

Where animism and awe of Nature cemented Stone Age family group behavior, Shamanism guided Bronze Age societies, allowing for psychically gifted individuals to act as spiritual mediums between the clans and their dead ancestors who in turn importuned the weather gods on behalf of the descendants to keep the harvests flourishing. followed. Shamans themselves were universally regarded with both fear and awe, Their psychic powers were demonstrated by their uncanny ability to diagnose and cure ailments without asking for symptoms, practice surgery, interpret dreams, comfort the dying and predict future events.

Among deeply devout Iron Age cultures who believed implicitly in their religious scriptures. I found that their belief in an omniscient, ever-observant God, brought a personal sense of conscientiousness to their craftsmanship and evoked a collective sense of pride in their national power. In school, scripture was learned religiously, side by side with science. State and Church were intrinsically intertwined. No politician was elected to office unless he was also a devout coreligionist. The kings and their families were naturally accepted as divine appointments. Religious ministers, mystics and dead saints were deeply revered for the spiritual services and miracles they performed.

From this personal experience among the three foundation Ages of human development, a clear trend emerged. As we enter a new age paradigm, we look outwards while we master its physical disciplines - then we turn increasingly inwards and try to master ourselves in relation to the increased state of awareness the new paradigm imposes on our individual and collective psyche.


I have since returned resume my life our western culture that is still trying to master a science-based paradigm. It is a culture that, via denigration of the past, remains largely unaware of how our ancestors really evolved. thought and worshipped, - characterizing our prehisitoric Ages as primitively superstitious and barbaric. It is also scornful of scriptures and the zealous religious practices of Iron Age cultures - an unkind process that dangerously divides the world community and which directly debases our own ancestral history, which believed in the claims of all our saints who proclaimed the existence of supernatural forces that lie beyond the realm of science, and who demonstrated their inspirations by uncounted acts of human kindness and service to our society.

This dichotomy, between our past history of reliance on metaphysics for sound social development and our current reliance, primarily on the physical sciences, and our subsequent impoverishment of inner understanding, has led me to look at the so called hippie movement and drug culture of the 1960's in a more holistic light. Since that time, some two hundred million Westerners, all with a basic science background, have taken initiation into a wide variety of esoteric spiritual practices, much of it from the Far East.

I have been part of that New Age movement for thirty years now. Spiritual ( or right brain) practices have immeasurably increased my understanding of myself and my motivations. I revere our ancestors. I have found that I can love and honor my family deeply. I can sing in tune, draw elegantly and dance up a storm. My IQ has jumped up a few notches and I can now master mathematical and physical equations that stumped me formerly.

So I ask you these questions:
Is our evolutionary cycle of increasing self consciousness on-going?
Does the new Nuclear Age herald the beginning of a new era of inward searching?
Will the 21st century bring on a new type of spirituality - both individually and collectively?
Are we at the start of a new spiritual paradigm that is directly related to the science of atomic theory?