The Scientific Way

Scientists have arrived – perhaps almost in spite of themselves – at the same conclusions reached millenniums before in the East.

Roberto Assagioli, from the Assagioli Archive in Florence. Original title: Piercing the Veil of Matter. The Cognitive (Scientific-Philosophic) Way – Beyond the Veil of Matter.

The fundamental obstacle to the realisation of spiritual states of consciousness is constituted by the unceasing succession of the sensations arriving via our senses from the material world, to which are added those arriving in our physical body. We thus live in an apparently solid and objective world, by which our consciousness is continuously monopolized one might say rather, hypnotized.

First, then, we have to free ourselves from this limitation and illusion by which the consciousness is held prisoner. We who live at this time are fortunate in having the powerful assistance of the very physical sciences that in the past foisted on man a wholly material conception of the universe. The revolutionary developments in chemistry and physics in the last few years are truly fundamental, but not all, not even among well-educated people, are aware of their tremendous implications. New conceptions arrived at by observation and precise experiment have established that the “matter” we perceive with our senses does not really exist. Matter appears solid, static and inert to us, but this is simply an illusion created by our limitated sense instruments of sight, touch, etc.

On the contrary, physics has demonstrated that the so-called “Matter” is in reality composed of minute and powerful electric charges, positive, negative and neutral, concentrated in centres and points and moving rapidly in space in conformity with laws and patterns based on mathematical formulae. The latter imply of necessity an intelligent principle or being, a Cosmic Mind which has formulated them and maintains them in operation. Thus it is that scientists have arrived – perhaps almost in spite of themselves – at the same conclusions reached millenniums ago by the most advanced philosophical thought: that the physical world an we perceive it is “phenomenal”, that is, apparent, and that behind and above it exits the world of reality composed of energies and intelligent powers. This is the world of causes, of which the phenomena are the effects.

To express this truth in another way, what is real is not directly perceived by our senses, but can only be inferred by our reason or realised by our intuition. Ouspensky in his book A New Model For The Universe has clearly developed this point:

“… invisible worlds, the religious, the philosophical, and the scientific, are after all, more closely related to one another than they would at first appear. And these invisible worlds of different categories possess identical properties common to all. These properties are, first: the fact that they contain the causes of the phenomena of the invisible world. This idea of cause is always associated with the invisible world. In the invisible world of the religious systems, invisible forces govern people and invisible phenomena. In the scientific invisible world the causes of visible phenomena always come from the invisible world of small quantity and ‘vibration’. In philosophical systems the phenomena are only our conception of the noumenon, that is, an illusion, the real of which remains hidden and inaccessible to us.”

“This shows that at all levels of his development, man has always understood that the causes of visible and observable phenomena lie beyond the sphere of observation. He has found that among observable phenomena certain facts could be regarded as causes of other facts, but these deductions were insufficient for the explanation of EVERYTHING that occurred in himself or around him. Therefore in order to be able to explain the causes it was necessary for him to have an invisible world consisting either of “Spirit” or “ideas” or “vibrations”.” [1]

Another way of which the veil of matter can be made almost transparent to our minds is the realisation that the three dimensions of space, of which we are normally aware, are not the only possible ones. Indeed, a number of mathematicians, physicist and philosophers, investigating the problem of dimensions, from different angels, have given good reasons for the existence of a fourth and other higher dimensions.

This subject is too technical to be dealt with here and it is not within the direct scope of this paper. Those who want to study it, can find it discussed in several books. A suggestive, non-technical and humorous presentation is contained in “Flatlands, Romance of many Dimensions” by Dr. Abbott Evelyn Abbott. (London – Seely & co. 1884), and in Claude Bragdon’s “Four Dimensional Vistas.” In the two books by Ouspensky “Tertium Organum” and the other just quoted, the subject is discussed at length.

The two chief conceptions of the fourth dimension are, that there is another dimension of space itself; the other, that time can be regarded the fourth dimension. As there can be more than four dimensions, the two conceptions are not mutually exclusive nor do they bare the possibilities of other and different conceptions. One such is that one can conceive a direction of dimension going from “matter”, as we know it, through other and more refined states of “substance” and energy to the realms of Vitality (Prana), of Feeling, of Mind; concrete and abstract; and on up to the sphere of pure spirit.

[1] Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe, p. 69