[MD] Art of Value

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting Case <Case at iSpots.com>:
> But I have understood you in the past to refer to a disembodied
> consciousness that exists outside of the energy and matter, rather like what
> Wilber calls spirit of soul.

Right. I've been convinced by a number of people smarter than me that consciousness
pervades everything and that it is a force or energy apart from that identified by
science. For example, from "Soul Search" by David Darling:

"No, it cannot be proved that the subject-object dualistic view of nature is wrong
any more than it can be proved it is right. But let us suspend judgment. Let us
accept that it may at least be equally valid to think of the universe as being a
true indivisible entity. Where does this view of reality lead?

"If we accept that everything in the universe has a subjective aspect, then the
brain appears in a new light. The brain begins to look more like a regulator or
editor of consciousness—a reducing valve. Most, if not all the major organs are
regulators. The lungs don’t manufacture the air we our bodies need; the stomach
and intestines are not food producers. So if we manufacture neither the air we 
breath nor the food we eat, why assume that we make, rather than regulate, what we
think?"

Or this from Oxford philosopher Ferdinand Schiller, in his book "Riddles of the Sphinx:"

“Matter is admirable calculated machinery for regulating, limiting and restraining
consciousness which it encases. Matter is not that which produces consciousness,
but that which limits it. It is an explanation which no evidence in favor of
materialism can possible affect. For if a man loses consciousness as soon as his
brain is injured, it is clearly as good an explanation to say the injury to the
brain destroyed the mechanism by which the manifestation of consciousness was
rendered possible as to say it destroyed the seat of consciousness.”

Or this from Lynn Margulis, professor of biology at the University of
Massachustetts:

"In this alternate paradigm, consciousness is there all the time, all around us—in
the trees, the earth, the sky, the emptiness of space. It is there waiting for us to
rejoin it. At death it is as if we move from one side of our senses to the other
—from the highly filtered, highly processed world inside the brain to the true,
unbounded universe, where subjective and objective coalesce. We step out of the
dense fog of introverted human perception to the clear air of reality."

Further, Henri-Louis Bergson was also drawn to the idea of consciousness being all
around us. For him, it was a force that applies intelligence to evolution. Biologist
Rupert Sheldrake has argued that consciousness exists in the form of a field spread
throughout space.

So the idea of a "disembodied" consciousness is not so far fetched as it might at
first appear. At least I consider it worthy of further scientific study, just as 
Robert Jahn studied psychic energy effects at Princeton. Adding our friend Pirsig
to the mix, perhaps Dynamic Quality is another name for the force of consciousness.

Platt
 








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