I SSN 1362 -1211 | No 103 | Summe r 2010

NetworkReviewJOUR N A L O F T H E S C I E N T I F I C

A N D M E D I C A L N E T W O R K

INSIDEA New Paradigm for Matter, Mind and Spirit, p. 3

From Spiritual Emergency to Spiritual Intelligence, p. 17

The Globalisation of Addiction, p. 47

Network Calendar 2010-2011

Please check email newsletter and website in case dates change.

October 23rd Joint meeting with the RSM – Criminal Intent. Leaflet enclosed.

November 6th Towards a New Renaissance – book launch conference. Leaflet enclosed.

November 15th The Making of Harmony – the Vision of the Prince of Wales, with Ian Skelly, book launch lecture ofthe Prince of Wales’s new book, Harmony, a New Way of Looking at the World, Lincoln Centre, 18Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3ED. 6.15 – 8.15, £5 (concessions, £3). Please reserve ticketswith Stephen Overy on 01233 813663 or email temenosacademy@myfastmail.net Space is limitedso early application is advised.

December 6th The Legacy of William James – a Centenary Assessment – evening dialogue with Prof. David Fontanaand David Lorimer at King’s College Hospital, 7-9 p.m. Members £12, Guests £15. Please reservewith the office.

2011 DATES FOR YOUR DIARYMarch 15th–20th Frenchman’s Cove conference in association with the SMN with Prof. Paul Davies – Life, the

Universe and Everything. See advertisement on inside back cover.

April 15th–17th Mystics and Scientists 34, Winchester, The Nature of Dreams: on the Threshold of Other Realities,with Dr. Larry Dossey (US), Prof. Charles Laughlin (US), Cedrus Monte (Switzerland), Dr. MortonSchatzman, Paul Devereux

LOCAL GROUPSLONDON - CLAUDIA NIELSEN – 0207 431 1177 or emailClaudia@cnielsen.euWe meet at 38 Denning Rd NW3 1SU at 7.30 for an

8pm start when parking restrictions are lifted. Nearesttube station is Hampstead (Northern Line) or HampsteadHeath (Overground). Cost is £8 for members and £10 forguests. Please confirm attendance so I can anticipatenumbers. Friends are always welcome.For more comprehensive information on presentations

(to include synopsis and biographies) plus summaries ofpast ones, go to the London Group page of the Networksite at www.scimednet.org. Unless they rely heavily onvisual pictures, talks are normally recorded and areavailable to members at Summaries of Previous Events ofthe London Group page of the website.Please note that sometimes talks have to be

rescheduled and information is sent via email so even ifyou are not in London but would like to be kept informedof changes, please send me an email and I will put youraddress on the list.

Tuesday 28th SeptemberDennis Blejer - The Magical Play of the CreationAccording to Modern Physics

Thursday 7th OctoberPaul Devereux - MAGICAL MINDSCAPES: How landscapewas invested with meaning in the Ancient World

Tuesday 19th OctoberDr. David Luke - Energy-consciousness duality:Parapsychology as a scientific mystery tradition

Thursday 18th NovemberGary Lachman - The Ghosts of Kusnacht:Jung and the Dead

Christmas celebration to be advised.

OTHER GROUPS(SEE UPDATES IN EMAIL NEWSLETTER)

Discussion groups for under 25s on the big questions of existenceThursday evenings between 7th October and 18th November in Bloomsbury, London

www.scimednet.org/widerhorizons

articles2 The Challenge of the New – Bernard Carr

3 A Proposed New Paradigm of Matter, Mind and Spirit– Bernard Carr

9 A Post-modern Emissary: moving forward fromMcGilchrist – Chris Clarke

13 Recent Developments in Science and Medicine– Marilyn Monk

16 Synthesising a DNA Genome is a Major Feat - but isit creating new life? – Marilyn Monk

17 Global Crisis and Transformation: from spiritualemergency to spiritual intelligence – Mick Collins

21 The Origins of my Fatigue – Sue Randall

23 The Evolutionary Future of the Network– Henryk Skolimowski

25 Consciousness and the End of the War betweenScience and Religion – Deepak Chopra

reports27 Order out of Chaos: Possibilities for Transformation

– John Clarke

correspondence30 A Defence of Networks – Max Payne, Frank Parkinson

and Diana Williams

network news33 NETWORK NEWS

35 LOCAL GROUP NEWS

36 MEMBERS’ ARTICLES

39 NEWS AND NOTICES

review section40 SCIENCE/PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

46 MEDICINE-HEALTH

49 PHILOSOPHY-RELIGION

55 PSYCHOLOGY-CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES

60 ECOLOGY

63 GENERAL

66 BOOKS IN BRIEF

NETWORK REVIEW is publishedthree times a year by theScientific & Medical Network,generally in April, August andDecember.

Editor: David Lorimer,Gibliston Mill,Colinsburgh, Leven, FifeKY9 1JS Scotland

Tel: +44 (0) 1333 340490

E-mail: dl@scimednet.org

Web Site: www.scimednet.org

(Members may apply to the SMNOffice for password to access theMembers Only area of the web site).

Editorial Board: David Lorimer, MaxPayne, Julian Candy, John Clarke

Printed by: Kingfisher Print & DesignLtd, Devon

The opinions expressed in Networkare those of individual authors andnot necessarily statements ofgeneral Network views. The Networkis in no way liable for viewspublished herein.

Notice to ContributorsAll proposed contributions shouldbe sent to the Editor by email as aWord and/or PDF file.

For further guidelines please email:dl@scimednet.org

Scientific and Medical NetworkRegistered office: 1 ManchesterCourt, Moreton-in-Marsh,Glos. GL560ZF, England. Tel: +44 (0) 1608652000

Fax: +44 (0) 1608 652001

Email: info@scimednet.org

Company limited by guarantee,registered No. 4544694 EnglandRegistered charity No. 1101171 UK

Network Manager: Charla Devereux

I SSN 1362 -1211 | No 103 | Summe r 2010

NetworkReviewJ O U R N A L O F T H E S C I E N T I F I C

A N D M E D I C A L N E T W O R K

INSIDE

A Post-modern Emissary

From Spiritual Emergency to Spiritual Intelligence

The Globalisation of Addiction

contents

Network Review Summer 2010 1

2 Network Review Summer 2010editorial

LAST APRIL I was honoured toaccept the invitation to succeedJohn Clarke as Chairman of the

Network. Since this is my firsteditorial, I would like to start byreiterating my brief expression ofthanks to John in the last issue foreverything he has achieved over thelast three years. He took on the rolefollowing the sad death of Bart van derLugt but his vision and dedicationguided us safely through that difficultperiod and he has overseen manyimportant developments. At its lastmeeting the Board agreed to offerJohn a Vice-Presidency and I amdelighted to report that he hasaccepted. This is not an honour whichis automatically bestowed on ex-chairsbut a way in which we can continue totake advantage of his wisdom anddeep knowledge of the SMN, eventhough he is no longer on the Board.Because I’m on sabbatical this year,

I’ve mostly been abroad sincebecoming chairman. At first thiscaused me concern, since it’s not soeasy to follow in John’s footstepswhen I’m out of the country. However,being able to perceive the SMN fromafar does at least help me toappreciate its special qualities –rather like looking back at the Earthfrom the moon – and to see itsactivities in a broader internationalperspective. Establishing closer linkswith organizations with allied interestsboth at home and abroad has becomeparticularly important in the context ofthe New Renaissance project.I’ve also found that being abroad

doesn’t make much practical differenceto the running of the SMN. In this ageof instant global communication, whereevery year seems to produce some newelectronic wizadry, physical location isno longer so crucial. As stressed in themessage from Gerri McManus, one ofthe most important recent develop-ments in the SMN has been theexpansion of our new website and thesetting up of Facebook and LinkedIngroups. These activities transcendnational boundaries and emphasize theessentially global nature of ourenterprise.Nevertheless, there is one supreme

advantage in being back in the UK, andthat is being able to attend the manystimulating and diverse SMN eventswhich are organized by our ProgrammeCommittee. The purpose of theseevents is not only to exchange

information, a function which could beperformed equally well in cyberspace.They are also social gatherings, inwhich interactions of the heart andspirit are just as important as those ofthe head. So whatever the benefits ofthe internet, and we clearly need toexploit these, it is no substitute forphysical communion.There could be no better illustration

of this than the recent AnnualGathering, which it was my greatprivilege to attend and preside over inmy first duty as chairman. Only at aphysical meeting, for example, couldone have witnessed the movingceremony – masterminded by ourPresident – in which the flame ofchairmanship was literally passed onfrom John to myself. This year theAnnual Gathering was held in ShirrellHeath and attracted the largestnumber of participants for a long time.The combination of the many newfaces, the ‘New Worldviews’ theme,the spirit of the ‘New Renaissance’,and even the name of the venue –‘New Place’ – all contributed to makethis a particularly exciting event.Indeed, the prevalence of the new hasinspired the title of this editorial.The Annual Gathering, of course,

provides a unique opportunity for themembers to express their views, partlythrough their contributed talks on theSaturday, but also during the sessionon Sunday morning when they canquestion the Board and voice theirconcerns about the SMN and theiraspirations for its future. I learnt atremendous amount from this session.One problem which came across

concerns the wide range ofenthusiasms of the members. We allhave a general interest in science andspirituality but the emphasis variesconsiderably. One of my own passions,for example, is psychical research and –as illustrated by my other contribution inthis issue – I’m particularly keen toextend physics to incorporate conscious-ness and associated mental, psychicaland spiritual phenomena. However, Irealize that this approach will not exciteeveryone, so I should stress that havingtwo contributions in this issue is purelycoincidental and that I do not intend touse my new position to regularly inflictlong articles on the membership!The polarity between science and

spirituality has, of course, always beena central issue for the SMN.Maintaining the right balance is not

easy and the number of scientists hasdwindled in recent years, which is atrend that needs to be reversed. Butthis raises problems of its ownbecause the frontiers of science areconstantly expanding and in thesedays of ever-increasing specialization,it becomes almost impossible to keepup with progress along the entirefrontier. Marilyn Monk’s regularcontribution on recent developmentsin science and medicine is helping toresolve this problem but we need tofocus more effort here.While I have extolled the virtues of

physical meetings, there is a price to bepaid because a huge amount of timeand resources go into organizing suchevents. Indeed, the need to provideservices like this for our members isthe main reason why the SMN has sucha large annual deficit. This is made upby a generous subsidy each year fromthe Trustees but this means eating intoour capital, which will only last a fewdecades at the present rate of attrition.Chris Lyons has been emphasizing thisfor a long time, but the seriousness ofthe situation only struck me when Ibecame chairman.Since all our income derives from

subscriptions, conference fees ordonations, there are only threesolutions to this problem: an increasein our membership or the number ofparticipants at our events; an increasein our subscriptions or the charges atour events; or an increase in ourcapital through fund-raising. Asemphasized by Gerri, a key strategy inincreasing our membership is toattract younger members and we aregrateful for support in this aim by theBlaker fund. As regards our fund-raising efforts, these have beenspearheaded by Olly Robinson and metwith modest success. However, it’sclear that we need more effort in thisdirection if we are to ensure our long-term survival, which is why there is aninsert about this with the currentissue. Last year we were fortunate toreceive a substantial bequest and it isclear that legacies will also play animportant role in furthering our work.All of these issues in some way

reflect the challenge of the new, be itthe need to embrace new technology,the need to keep up with new ideas inscience, or the need for newmembers. I look forward to furtherdiscussion of these issues in futureeditorials.

Bernard Carr

The Challenge of the New

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world, so it is useful to distinguish between percepts ofphysical and non-physical origin, but percepts themselvesare always mental. The interesting philosophical questionconcerns the relationship between the percept and theobject, and whether they are as distinct as the dividing linein Figure (1) suggests. Any model which purports to unifymatter and mind must address this question.The second problem is an empirical one. The standard

view that the material world is real and the mental worldimaginary does not sit easily with the findings of psychicalresearch, since these suggest that in some circumstancesmental worlds may be shared (as in telepathy) or directlycontain the physical world (as in clairvoyance) or evenaccess the past and future of the physical world (as inretrocognition and precognition). Experiences of thetranspersonal kind indicate that the mental world may alsocontain higher levels of reality which are not accessible tophysical sensors at all. This suggests that one needs a

IntroductionIn Part I of this article1, I argued that it is important toexpand physics to accommodate mental experiences of allkinds – normal, paranormal and spiritual – and suggestedthat there may already be hints that this is possible. Imentioned the possibility that quantum theory may play a rolebut cautioned that this is unlikely to provide a completeexplanation. One probably needs a new paradigm whichincorporates consciousness at some more fundamental leveland underlies both quantum theory and mentality. In this part,I am going to describe my own approach to the problem. Thisis presented at greater length elsewhere2 and invokes theexistence of extra dimensions of the kind which are alreadypostulated by modern physics. This proposal is unlikely to bepopular with most of my physics colleagues but – even if it iswrong – it demonstrates that models bridging the gulfbetween science and spirituality can at least be envisaged.

Two WorldsAll of us inhabit two worlds. There is the material world,which is studied by physics and which we move around in andinteract with in our normal waking state, and there is themental world, which we encounter in our memories, thoughtsand dreams. We may also occasionally encounter lessfamiliar regions of this world in mystical experiences andaltered states of consciousness. There are many differencesbetween the two worlds and these are summarized in Figure(1). Most people would claim that the material world isexternal or objective or public, in the sense that it can beaccessed by everybody and corresponds to some communalreality. It also obeys laws which can be investigated throughexperiment and 3rd person investigation, which is the usualprerequisite of science. By contrast, the mental world isassumed to be internal or subjective or private, so itscontents are imaginary and do not appear to conform to lawsin the same way as physical systems. They are in the domainof experience or 1st person investigation and more closelyallied to mysticism.There are various reasons to be suspicious of the

dichotomy in Figure (1). The first problem is a philosophicalone. Our information about the physical world comes fromlooking at instruments, scrutinizing data, reading papersetc., all of which involve sense perceptions, so even ourexperience of matter is ultimately mental. There is a subsetof percepts which seem to be generated by the physical

Bernard Carr

A Proposed New Paradigm ofMatter, Mind and Spirit

This is the second of a two-part article suggesting a new theoretical model to unifyphysics and consciousness.

MATTER

External Internal

Objective Subjective

Public Private

3rd person 1st person

Real Imaginary

Experiment Experience

Science Mysticism

Outer

SPACE

Inner

MIND

TWO WORLDS

CONSCIOUSNESS

FIGURE 1. Showing how the traditional dichotomy between matter and mindmay be bridged by extending the notion of space and consciousness.

4 Network Review Summer 2010articles

Phenomenal SpaceThe term ‘phenomenal’ here refers to those percepts whichare appear to be generated by the physical world via physicalsensors (i.e. the only ones associated with an external realityin the standard view). Most scientists and philosophers adoptthe view of representative theory, in which phenomenal spaceis just an internal construct of the brain (i.e. the object isprimary and the percept is derivative). The alternative naïverealist view posits that phenomenal space is the same asphysical space (i.e. the percept is the object). While advancesin neuroscience now make it very difficult to uphold the latterview, recent developments in theoretical physics suggest thatrepresentative theory is also unsatisfactory – at least in itsoriginal form – since the ultimate reality revealed by modernphysics bears very little resemblance to the common sensereality of classical physics. Indeed, the version of realityassumed by old-fashioned representative theory is itself arepresentation! As we will see, my own model regards bothobject and percept as lower-dimensional projections of a 4-dimensional structure, so neither is primary and the perceptis not in the brain. This resembles the view of John Smythies4,who regards phenomenal space as a sort of parallel universe,just as real as physical space but different. He envisagesphysical space and phenomenal space as intersectinghyperplanes, with their moving intersection being associatedwith the flow of time.

Memory and Visualisation SpaceWe group these together since visualisations at least partlycomprise an amalgamation of memory images. Thereductionist view is that all memories are stored in the brainand therefore arise from the physical world indirectly. On theother hand, some memories (eg. a subset of dreammemories) seem to have no connection to the physical world.Also reincarnation memories (if valid) presumably do notderive from the brain and this has prompted Ian Stevenson5

to suggest that memory images may reside in a space whichextends beyond physical space. According to Jim Culbertson6,this could be spacetime itself, since he has proposed thatmemory merely reflects the causal spacetime link betweenthe original event and the brain. This corresponds to a sort ofre-experiencing of the past, so the brain does not store thememory itself (i.e. it contains a tag rather than a trace). Sincethe brain is itself part of spacetime, it could still replicate theinformation to some degree (like a photograph) but thespacetime structure persists even when the tags and traceshave disappeared.

model in which the mental world takes on some attributes ofexternality, while the material world takes on some attributesof internality. In the words of Paul Brunton3, ‘we must learnto mentalise space and spatialise mind’.In resolving these problems, I believe a crucial clue comes

from another feature highlighted in Figure (1). For it seems thatboth physical phenomena and a large class of mentalphenomena involve some form of space, so the descriptionouter space and inner space might be used in this context.Descartes’ distinction between res cogitans and res extensais misleading in this respect, since some contents of mind arecertainly extended. Both worlds also involve the experience oftime, although the relationship between mental time andphysical time is not fully understood. My proposal is thatmental and physical space can be integrated into a communalspace which is higher dimensional, in the sense that it hasmore than the three dimensions perceived by our physicalsensors. This involves what I call a Universal Structure, whichis a sort of higher-dimensional information space. It has ahierarchical structure, each level being associated with anextra dimension, and it unifies matter and mind in the sensethat the first level of the hierarchy is physical space.Finally, and most profoundly, there is the problem of

consciousness, as distinct from the problem of the contentsof consciousness. Although it is an obvious feature of themental world, most physicists assume that consciousness isirrelevant to the material world and therefore neglect italtogether. However, once the distinction between mind andmatter becomes blurred, the notion of matter asunconscious and mind as conscious makes no sense. Asindicated in Figure (1), consciousness must underlie bothworlds, so there is merely a distinction between innerconsciousness and outer consciousness.

A Space for MindIn this section I will develop the argument that a wide range ofmental experiences require some form of space. In fact, oneneeds a sequence of spaces, associated with experienceswhich are increasingly controversial from a scientificperspective. The defining characteristics of these spaces aresummarised in the table opposite and described in more detailin the subsequent discussion. This sequence will turn out to beassociated with increasing dimensionality, so one is not dealingwith ordinary physical space here. The aim is to produce aGrand Unified Theory of mind which accommodates all forms ofmental experience and is analogous to the physicists’ GrandUnified Theory of matter. This sounds rather pretentious, so Ishould stress that the term ‘mind’ is used here in a veryrestricted sense. My focus is mainly on its perceptual aspectsand many other aspects (cognition, emotion, volition etc.) wouldneed to be included in a more complete treatment.Although the breakdown into 11 classes is somewhat

arbitrary, since one could certainly merge or subdivide someof these mental spaces, the order of the sequence issignificant, since it represents the transition from normal toparanormal to spiritual. Indeed, the classification of mentalspaces in the table clearly relates to the classification ofexperiences in Figure (4) of Paper I. Spaces (1) to (4) areorthodox and studied by mainstream psychologists; spaces(5) to (7) are controversial and studied by parapsychologists;spaces (8) to (11) are mystical and studied by transpersonalpsychologists. Also, while all these spaces areinterconnected in various ways, we will see that they form alogical progression.

NORMAL

(1) Phenomenal. Generated by perception of physical space via sensors.

(2) Memory. Replay of images experienced through sensors in the past.

(3) Visualisation. Generated/controlled by imagination and creativity.

(4) Dream space. Like memory/visualisation space plus other elements.

PARANORMAL

(5) Psi. Involves direct interaction between mental and physical space.

(6) Apparition. Different from physical space but aspects of externality.

(7) Threshold. Pseudo-physical experiences on border of sleep/waking.

SPIRITUAL

(8) OBE. Subtly different from physical space, changed by imagination.

(9) NDE. Relates to OBE space but other spatial experiences involved.

(10) Survival. Where ‘soul’ dwells after death or between incarnations.

(11) Mystical. Various extrovertive experiences plus ‘higher planes’.

TABLE OF MENTAL SPACES

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photons, it may still result from the brain’s attempt torepresent something external.

Threshold SpaceThere are a wide range of experiences associated with thethreshold between sleep and waking which might bedescribed as ‘pseudo-physical’, in the sense that theyappear to take place in the physical world. These includehypnogogic and hypnopompic images and a variety ofexperiences (such as the ‘old hag’ phenomenon) associatedwith false awakenings and sleep paralysis12. While sleepparalysis has a well understood physiological basis, thisdoes not invalidate the status of the experiencesthemselves, and it could be just one of a variety of alteredstates of consciousness which facilitate access to otherlevels of reality. Threshold experiences have somecharacteristics of apparitions but they are more intense andlonger-lasting. While there is prima facie evidence that theyare associated with the physical world, since the subjectsbelieve they are awake and may simultaneously be aware ofgenuine physical events, it seems unlikely that the effectsinvolved (eg. the sounds of footsteps, opening doors,creaking bed-springs etc.) are genuinely physical. The viewadopted here is that threshold phenomena (like apparitions)involve some form of non-physical space.

OBE SpaceIn an OBE (out-of-body experience), the point ofconsciousness appears to be separated from the physicalbody, sometimes being associated with an astral bodyinstead and moving around in a space which resemblesphysical space13. One view is that OBE space is just a mentalconstruct, but with consciousness sometimes acquiringveridical information about the physical world or even causingevents there through ESP and PK (cf. Tyrrell’s theory ofapparitions). A second view is that OBE space is the same asphysical space. One way of demonstrating this would be toshow that something actually leaves the physical body (eg. bymeasuring a weight loss) or to detect some influenceassociated with the astral body. However, the evidence forsuch effects is weak and OBE space anyway seems to besubtly different from physical space. A third view is that OBEspace is a duplicate of physical space, with non-physicalobjects and non-physical sensors14. Since one may encounterhigher planes in an OBE, there may even be a hierarchy ofnon-physical worlds. In my own model, physical space andOBE space are envisaged as different aspects of a singlehigher-dimensional space. The crucial distinction between thefirst and third viewpoints lies in whether one invokes psi toexplain OBE space or OBE space to explain psi.

NDE and Survival SpaceIn an NDE (near-death-experience), one initially movesaround in a space resembling OBE space. However, variousother experiences are involved, such as the ‘tunnel’ effect,encounters with the ‘light’ and deceased love ones, lifereviews and reaching some form of ‘bridge’, whose traversalsymbolises the irreversible passage from life to death15. Theuniformity of these experiences suggests that NDEs mayinvolve accessing some higher reality. Jean-Pierre Jourdan16

even claims that some NDE features (360 degree vision,seeing through objects etc.) are compatible with varyingdegrees of displacement in a fifth dimension. It would benatural to associate NDE space with ‘survival space’ (i.e. thespace in which the soul is supposed to reside after death),the existence of such a space being a feature of many

Dream SpaceMany dreams (especially lucid ones) seem to take place in aspace which resembles ordinary physical space and can bejust as vivid. Indeed, while dream space is clearly differentfrom physical space, it is sometimes difficult to tell whetherone is awake or dreaming. According to reductionism, dreamimages result from a jumbling up of images received throughthe physical sensors while awake (i.e. memories andvisualisations). However, while dream space clearly bearssome relationship to memory and visualization space, theycannot be identical, since one can still visualize somethingin a dream and distinguish it from the dreamscape. In fact,H.H. Price7 has suggested that dreams exist in a differentspace from physical events. They are going on all the timebut consciousness only occasionally accesses them. Dreamspace could still be private in this model but C.D. Broad8

goes further and advocates merging individual dream spacesinto a single space of more than three dimensions. Thisimplies that dream space could be communal in somecircumstances.

Psi SpaceThe term ‘psi’ here refers to extrasensory perception (ESP)and psychokinesis (PK), which might be regarded as thebasic phenomena which underlie all psychic interactions. Areductionist explanation of psi would assume that brains caninteract with each other and the physical world through somelittle understood physical mechanism, but I argued againstthis in Part I. Instead, I would infer that even percepts of non-physical origin may possess attributes of externality. Forexample, if I visualise a cat and somebody else ‘sees’ it (asin telepathy), perhaps it really exists ‘somewhere’, althoughpresumably not in physical space. Likewise, oneinterpretation of clairvoyance might be that mental spacealready contains physical space in some sense. Since manypsychic experiences come through dreams, there seems tobe some connection between psi space and dream space. Inparticular, dreams may sometimes convey veridicalinformation about the present, past or even future of thephysical world, which may support Culbertson’s picture ofmemory. In relating his model to psi, Smythies assumes thatthe focus of the mind is usually on the brain but thatprocesses termed ‘psi-gamma’ (passive) and ‘psi-kappa’(active) can also operate on the surrounding ‘penumbra’ 9.

Apparition SpaceThe standard view is that apparitions are just hallucinationswith no objective reality (i.e. they do not result from externalstimuli). However, some apparitions are seen by differentpeople at different times (as in the classical ghost story) orby more than one person at the same time. There are evencollective cases, where the apparition appears to be viewedfrom different perspectives, as though in the same space asthe observers. There are also death-bed visions or ‘crisis’apparitions, which may convey veridical information. Oneinterpretation is that apparitions are indeed constructs of themind but contain psi-mediated information content. Forexample, G.N.M. Tyrrell10 suggests that collective apparitionscan be explained by telepathy. Another interpretation –suggested perhaps by ghost photographs – is thatapparitions exist in physical space, but the provenance ofthese photographs is usually questionable and mostapparitions do not seem to leave any physical trace at all.The third interpretation, advocated by Frederic Myers11 andalso favoured here, is that apparitions exist in some non-physical space. Even though the percept is not produced by

6 Network Review Summer 2010articles Photons travel at 45 degrees in a spacetime diagram, so the

observer’s perceptual field at any moment corresponds topart of his past light-cone. This is illustrated in Figure (3) withone spatial dimension suppressed. A 20th centuryphilosopher would therefore argue that reality is a 4-dimensional structure (S4) but the notion that the world isreal because there exists a higher-dimensional structurewhich reconciles our perceptions of it is preserved. Indeed,the situation can still be represented symbolically by Figure(2), providing one interprets the squares as past light-conesand the cube as S4.It is interesting – and not generally appreciated – that the

controversy between naïve realism and representative theoryis largely resolved with the 4D perspective. This is becausethe distinction between the 3D object and the 2D percept onlyreally arises in the Newtonian context. In Special Relativity theobject and percept are merely different cross-sections of a 4Dworld-tube: the object is the world-tube’s intersection with ahypersurface of constant time, while the percept is itsintersection with the observer’s past light-cone. Of course,perception is generally more complicated than this – not evenvisual perception is always restricted to the past light-coneand there are also non-visual modes which involve timelikesignals. However, I would argue that every form of perception– including any natural extension of the physical sensorysystem (such as a telescope, microscope, TV, computerscreen or virtual reality helmet) can be represented as someform of cross-section of a 4D structure. Even the brainprocesses involved in perception can be related to the world-lines associated with neuronal signals.Since both the object and the percept are lower-

dimensional projections in the 4D description, neither isprimary and so the standard view of representative theory issuperseded. Furthermore, while the percept is 2D in the 3Dview, being just a geometrical projection, it is at least partly3D in the 4D view because of all the extra information whichcan propagate from the object to the sensors via non-visualsense modes. The distinction between the 3D and 4D viewsmay be summed up as follows:

3D view: 3D object� 2D percept.4D view: 4D object� 3D object + 3D percept.

The 4D picture corresponds to a sort of extended mind, inwhich consciousness is associated with all the parts ofspacetime to which the brain is linked through signalling world-

versions of the survival hypothesis. For example, ifreincarnation occurs, the soul is presumably locatedsomewhere between incarnations and the experiencesdescribed in some religious texts clearly require some typeof non-physical space. In the Buddhist tradition this may beconnected with dream space and – since one’s identity isdefined by one’s memories – it may also relate to memoryspace. If Stevenson is correct in asserting that memoryspace extends beyond physical space5, then the mind islarger than the body and may well outlast it.

Mystical SpaceThe features of extrovertive mystical experience have beensummarized by Paul Marshall17 and include a sense of unityand immortality, a deeper sense of reality, feelings of wonder,joy and beauty, intellectual illumination etc. As with NDEs,the fact that these features are transcultural suggestsaccess to some higher reality. It is clear that mysticalexperiences do not occur in physical space and occasionallya transcendence of space and time is reported. However,more often a distortion of space and time seems to beinvolved. Sometimes the experience is explicitly described ashigher dimensional, so a major challenge in a model such asmine is to classify the different types of experience in termsof the number of purported dimensions. This approachfeatures in the work of Michael Whiteman18, who uses a‘reality index’ to classify a range of separative experiences.Another crucial aspect is the nature of time in mysticalexperience: the specious present may be vastly expanded,so that one’s entire life appears to be instantaneous. Theremight even be a state of pure consciousness or purusa,related to introvertive experiences, in which space and timecease to exist altogether19.

Higher-Dimensional Reality StructureIn order to justify my proposal, I need to make the notion ofa higher-dimensional reality more precise. If one were to aska philosopher of the 19th century in what sense the physicalworld is real, he might have replied as follows: There existsa 3-dimensional (3D) space in which are localised both thesensors through which we observe the world and thephysical objects themselves. Each observer has only partialinformation about that space because of the limitations ofhis sensory system. (For example, his eyes will provide himwith a projection of the space which is essentially 2D.)However, the crucial point is that, given his location and thedirection in which he is looking, one can always predict howhe ought to see it. The fact that one can find a 3Dconfiguration which predicts a set of 2D projectionsconcordant with those which are actually presented to thedifferent observers is what is meant by stating that thephysical world is real. One may say that the physical world isa 3-dimensional structure (S3) which consistently reconcileshow everybody within that structure perceives it. Thesituation is depicted in Figure (2), which represents threeperceptual fields (P1, P2, P3) by squares and the realitystructure (S3) by a cube.The construction of S3 only applies at a particular time.

From a Newtonian perspective, time is absolute, so the 3Dstructures at successive moments can be trivially patchedtogether to incorporate the flow of time. However, Einstein’stheory of Special Relativity showed that space and time arenot absolute but part of a spacetime continuum. Thus aconsistent picture of how different observers perceive theworld requires that it be 4D, with the fourth dimension beingtime and material objects corresponding to world-lines.

PERCEPTUAL FIELDS

REALITY STRUCTURE

P1

P2

P3

S FIGURE 2. A symbolicrepresentation of how a realitystructure (3D for Newton, 4Dfor Einstein) reconciles thedifferent perceptual fields (2Dfor Newton, 3D for Einstein) ofobservers within that structure.

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have geometrical significance). It is implicit here thatperception always involves some form of sensor which isitself associated with an actuality plane and cannot receivesignals from any higher one. Figure (5) indicates a possibleassociation of mental space with higher dimensions.But what are these extra dimensions and how do they

relate to consciousness? We have already emphasised thatthe Universal Structure must incorporate the ordinary time ofSpecial Relativity. However, one also needs to assign a timecoordinate to non-physical experiences and this requires thateach level of the hierarchy have its own dimension of time.One therefore has a hierarchy of times {t1, t2,… tD-3} with t1corresponding to the time of Special Relativity. The multi-level time perspective also relates to the problem of identity(1st personhood), since consciousness may be fragmentedat one level but unitary at a higher level. From thisperspective telepathy would be the manifestation of thehigher dimensional connection between people, whilemystical unity would reflect an even higher level ofconnectedness.The next step in the argument is to identify the Universal

Structure with the higher-dimensional space of modernphysics. In particular, I relate it to the Randall-Sundrumversion of M-theory22, illustrated in Figure (2) of Part I, in whichthe physical Universe is regarded as a 4D ‘brane’ in a higher-dimensional ‘bulk’. For if physical objects occupy only alimited part of that higher-dimensional space, it is natural toask whether anything else exists there. Since the only non-physical entities which we experience are mental ones, andsince it has been argued that all mental experiences have toexist in some sort of space, it seems natural to associate thiswith the bulk. However, I should stress that my proposal doesnot depend on M-theory itself being correct. Indeed, itpreceded the brane-bulk proposal by several decades. Onejust needs some form of higher-dimensional model.The final step is to formulate a theory of how the different

elements in the Universal Structure interact with each other.Of course, this is a very ambitious task. The Randall-Sundrum picture confines attention to the interaction ofobjects on the brane, which in my language is the firstactuality plane, whereas the full theory must also considerthe interactions of objects in the bulk, corresponding tohigher actuality planes. So not only must one provide amodel for how objects on the first actuality plane interact(i.e. a complete theory of physics), one must further describe

lines; it is not localised within the brain itself because that isjust one end of the causal chain. Thus the stars are notcontained within the skull – they are precisely where theyappear to be, a view also advocated by Rupert Sheldrake20 andMax Velmans21. In the context of physical perception, mind isspacetime, which is why one cannot regard consciousness asbeing confined to the right side of Figure (1).This proposal is reminiscent of the ‘Spacetime Reductive

Materialism’ model of Jim Culbertson6, in whichconsciousness is contained within what he terms the‘spacetime outlook tree’ of the brain. This corresponds tothe complete nexus of spacetime connections between thebrain and all the events it perceives at any time. Soawareness is not an emergent property but an extendedpattern in spacetime, with the relationship between thedifferent observers being like a global tapestry ofentanglement. However, it should be stressed thatCulbertson was essentially a reductionist and neverextended his model beyond the physical domain.This approach is fine as far as it goes but it makes no

reference to the other sorts of sense-data which arepresented to our consciousness: mental percepts with nophysical counterparts. In fact, so far we have only coveredthe first two of the mental spaces discussed earlier. Onetherefore needs to extend the definitions of reality givenabove to include the possibility that the other ones may alsobe real (i.e. communal) in some sense. This is achieved byassuming that the communal space has extra dimensions.With the addition of each dimension, the number of objectsand observers incorporated increases, so one generates ahierarchy of reality structures of increasing dimensionality(S4, S5, S6….). One eventually reaches a maximumdimensionality D, at which point one has extended the realitystructure as much as possible. The final one (SD) is termedthe ‘Universal Structure’ and represented symbolically inFigure (4) by a hypercube (the 4D analogue of a cube). Thelowest member of the hierarchy is just the 4D realitystructure of Special Relativity (S4), which we might regard asthe ‘physical’ world. So one has resolved the paradox ofFigure (1) by incorporating both sides in some larger ‘box’.Any percept which is contained within this structure is said

to possess actuality’(a less ambiguous term than reality)and in principle all percepts could be included. One canformally regard the extra perceptual elements which areincorporated as one introduces successive dimensions asdefining a sequence of ‘actuality planes’ (where the term‘plane’ is not used in the usual 2D sense but turns out to

t

x

y

future

light-cone

past

light-cone

ABSOLUTE

FUTURE

ABSOLUTE

PAST

HERE-NOW

ELSEWHERE

3D space at t4

3D space at t2

3D space at t2

3D space at t1

t

4D SPACETIME

Time A

Time B

Space A

Space B

3D SPACE + TIME

FIGURE 3: A summary of Special Relativity, showing the amalgamation of 3Dspace and time into 4D spacetime on the right and the light-cone structure onthe left.

MENTAL PERCEPTUAL FIELDS PHYSICAL PERCEPTUAL FIELDS

UNIVERSAL STRUCTURE

(D-DIMENSIONAL)

PHYSICAL SPACE-TIME

(4-DIMENSIONAL)

M1 M2 M3

P1 P2 P3

FIGURE 4. This shows how one can extend the notion of a reality structureto include non-physical percepts by generalising from a 4D structure to ahigher-dimensional one.

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articles 4 J.R. Smythies, The Walls of Plato’s Cave (Aldershot:

Avebury Press 2004).5 I. Stevenson, ‘Some questions related to cases of the

reincarnation type’, Journal of American SPR 68, 395-416 (1974).

6 J.C. Culbertson, Sensations, Memories and the Flow ofTime (Cromwell Press 1976).

7 H.H.Price, ‘Survival and the idea of another world’Proceedings of Society for Psychical Research 50, 1-25(1955).

8 C.D. Broad, Religion, Philosophy & Psychical Research(Harcourt-Brace 1953).

9 R.H.Thouless and B.P. Wiesner, ‘The psi process innormal and paranormal psychology’ Proceedings ofSociety for Psychical Research 48, 177-196 (1947).

10 G.N.M. Tyrrell, Apparitions (Society for PsychicalResearch 1973).

11 F.H.W. Myers, Human Personality and its Survival ofBodily Death (Longmans 1903).

12 D. Hufford, The Terror that Comes in the Night(University of Pensylvania Press 1989).

13 S. Muldoon and H. Carrington, The Projection of theAstral Body (Rider 1929).

14 J. Poynton, ‘Challenges of out-of-body experiences:Does psychical research fully meet them?’ Journal ofSociety for Psychical Research 65, 194-206 (2001).

15 P. Fenwick and E. Fenwick, The Truth of the Light: AnInvestigation of Over 300 NDEs (Headline BookPublishing 2004).

16 J-P. Jourdan, ‘Just an extra dimension’ Les Cahiers deIANS-France (2000).

17 P.D.Marshall, Mystical Encounters with the NaturalWorld: Experiences and Explanations (OxfordUniversity Press 2005).

18 J.H.M.Whiteman, Old and New Evidence on theMeaning of Life. Vol. 1: An Introduction to ScientificMysticism (Colin Smythe 1986).

19 I.K.Taimni, The Science of Yoga (Quest Books 1999).20 R. Sheldrake, The Sense of Being Stared At and Other

Aspects of the Extended Mind (Hutchinson 2004).21 M.Velmans, ‘Are we out of our minds?’ Journal of

Consciousness Studies 12, 109-116 (2005).22 L. Randall and R. Sundrum, ‘An alternative to

compactification’ Physical Review Letters 83, 4690-4693 (1999).

23 H. More, Enchiridion Metaphysicum (1671).24 J.C.F. Zollner, Transcendental Physics (W.H.Harrison

1880).25 C.H. Hinton, Speculations on the Fourth Dimension:

Selected Writings of C.H.Hinton, ed. R.Rucker (Dover1980).

26 S.-P. Sirag, ‘Consciousness: A hyperspace view’ In TheRoots of Consciousness, ed. J. Mishlove, pp 327-365(Council Oaks Books 1993).

27 J.E. Beichler, ‘To be or not to be! A paraphysics forthe new millennium’ Journal of Scientific Exploration15, 33-56 (2001).

28 P.D.Marshall, The Living Mirror: Images of Reality inScience and Mysticism (Samphire Press 1992/2006).

29 D. Lawton, ‘The metaphysics of near-deathexperiences’, Journal of Scientific and Medical Network97, 3-7 (2008)

how objects on higher actuality planes interact. This is alsonecessary if one wants to extend the discussion from thepassive aspects of mind involved in perception to moreactive ones. The model involves a formulation of what I term‘Transcendental Field Theory’. The name indicates, firstly,that all the interactions are assumed to proceed via fieldsand, secondly, that the fields involved are more extensivethan the usual physical ones. However, there is no space todiscuss this further here.

ConclusionThis article has described a new paradigm in which matterand mind are merged at a very fundamental level. Thebenefit of this is that physical percepts are no longer uniquein representing an external reality. However, the price onepays is that the space required is not the usual physical one;it is a higher-dimensional space with a complicatedhierarchical structure. Of course, associating extradimensions with mind and mysticism is not a new idea.Henry More23 associated spirits with an extra dimension inthe 17th century, while Johann Zollner24 and Charles Hinton25

explored the same idea in connection with Spiritualisticphenomena in the 19th century. More recently, it has beenemphasised in the work of physicists like Saul-Paul Sirag26

and Jim Beichler27 and philosophers like Paul Marshall28 andDavid Lawton29. A more detailed history can be found in mySPR Proceedings. However, only recently has the link withphysics become compelling. Although the model proposedhere is not the usual type of one-level reductionist physics, itshould still be classified as science and I would argue thatmultiple levels of reality are a vital ingredient of any modellinking matter, mind and spirituality.

References1 B.J. Carr, ‘Seeking a new paradigm of matter, mind

and spirit’ Journal of Scientific and Medical Network101, 3-8 (2010).

2 B.J. Carr, ‘Worlds apart: Can psychical research bridgethe gulf between matter and mind?’ Proceedings ofSociety for Psychical Research, 59, 1-96 (2008).

3 P. Brunton, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, Paul BruntonPhilosophic Foundation (Larson Publications 1985).

UNIFICATION OF MENTAL SPACES

PHENOM’

MEMORY4D STRUCTURE

SURV’L

5D STRUCTURE

MYSTICAL

APPAR’N

THRESH’D

OBE

NDE

DREAM

PSI

UNIVERSAL

STRUCTURE

VISUAL’N

?

6D STRUCTURE

?

MYSTICAL

FIGURE 5. Tentative assignment of higher dimensions to different types ofmental space, with dotted lines indicating uncertainty in model and‘mystical’ space being divided into grades.

Network Review Summer 2010 9

The Polarity of Being HumanMany members of the SMN will by now be familiar with IainMcGilchrist’s analysis. In The Master and his Emissary 1, ofthe functions of the two hemispheres of our brain, whichconstitute two different views of the world. While thisimportant work is indeed groundbreaking, I will argue that itis also gravely limited. McGilchrist is prevented from seeingthe way forward by two obstacles. First, he identifies soclosely with Western academic culture that he neglects theroles of other cultural strands vital to us at this juncture.Second, he similarly neglects the role of spirituality as it actsat the interpersonal and group level.To summarise the key theme of the book: in the light of his

analysis of the brain hemispheres, McGilchrist argues thatthe successive phases of Western culture, from the 6thcentury BCE to the present, ‘represent a power strugglebetween these two ways of experiencing the world, and thatwe have ended up prisoners of just one – that of the lefthemisphere alone.’ He presents this through themetaphorical story of a ruler (the Master, the meaning-making right hemisphere) and his delegate (the Emissary,the analytic left hemisphere) in which the Emissary, despitehis inferior wisdom and knowledge, usurps his Master andtakes control of the kingdom. The chilling result is that wemay be on the verge of a crisis in which

the emissary, insightless as ever, appears to believe itcan see everything, do everything, alone. But it cannot:on its own it is like a zombie, a sleepwalker amblingstraight towards the abyss, whistling a happy tune2.

In this article I will first expand on this idea that ourthinking is made up of two different parts, which give us twodifferent worlds. Then in subsequent sections I will arguethat we humans can avoid this ‘abyss’ if we take to heartthose practices and skills which, alongside mainstreamWestern culture, offer us here and now a way of life thatrestores the balance between the two worlds of our thinking.The idea that there is some sort of polarity in the human

mind, a dynamical balance between two principles, has oftenbeen proposed in many forms. The most familiar is thedivision between the unconscious and conscious minddeveloped by Freud, but many other polarities have beenproposed since then. In particular, the ‘interacting cognitivesubsystems’ model (ICS) of John Teasdale and PhillipBarnard3 uses data from experimental psychology tosupport a scheme that includes and refines many previous

ones. I will describe it here because it forms acomplementary ‘functional’ counterpart to the ‘anatomical’formulation of McGilchrist, with a striking degree ofcorrespondence between the two. Each sheds light on theother.According to Teasdale and Barnard we are governed, at

the top level of our mental organisation, by two distinctmeaning-making ‘interacting cognitive subsystems’, both ofwhich contribute, in part, to our consciousness. One (the‘implicational’ subsystem) is concerned with the significancefor the self of its overall context, drawing immediately of oursensations. It deals with what concerns us, includingmonitoring threats and opportunities, and with relationships,in the sense of our meaningful connections with other beingsand within ourselves. The other (the ‘propositional’subsystem) is concerned with analysis and with the thinkingthat is associated with speech; that is, thinking in‘propositions’. It has no direct contact with the senses, butrelies on other subsystems, including the implicational, forinformation derived from the senses.There are some differences between this model and

McGilchrist’s, such as the way they describe our handling oftime, but the two approaches seem to be addressing thesame basic polarity of the mind. In what follows, therefore,I shall use the terminology of ‘hemispheres’ while at timesdrawing on cognitive subsystems theory to enlarge onMcGilchrist’s model, and in particular on the development ofit by Isabel Clarke in the context of psychosis and spirituality4

to which I will return in the final section.

The Question of CultureHuman beings are distinguished by cultures: our highlyelaborated systems of doing and thinking which operate inaddition to, and in two-way interaction with, our geneticmakeup. (McGilchrist provides an impressively carefulanalysis of this cultural-genetic interaction in Chapter 7.)Cultures vary with time and place, and different cultures cancoexist in the same time and place with only limitedinteraction, much as different species of finches can coexistdespite the biological possibility of hybridisation. McGilchristis concerned with just one of these cultures, which hasexpanded so as to dominate the whole world even up to thepoint of altering its climate, namely Western Culture. In hisconception, it emerged and flowered with the free citizenry ofthe Greek city-states, entered the period of the Roman empire

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Chris Clarke

A Post-modern Emissary:moving forward from McGilchrist

Many readers will have read Iain McGilchrist’s book, or at least the two articlesprinted in the Review. Here Chris Clarke identifies two gaps in his analysis andproposes his own way forward.

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culture; they constitute cultures antithetical to Westernculture, in that Western culture is dominated by the lefthemisphere and subjugated cultures maintain a balance withthe right hemisphere.Since the right hemisphere is concerned with the

particularity of the individual, and the left with genericconceptual classes, the subjugated cultures are necessarilyvaried, pluralistic. There is no such thing as ‘non-Westernculture’, only ‘non-Western cultures’. And herein lies thehope: the hope not for a counterweight that can overthrowthe current Western culture, but for a variety of openings inMcGilchrist’s ‘wall of mirrors’ that otherwise bars off thepossibility of our reclaiming our right hemisphere. To reachthis, however, we must deal with a much derided term ...

Post-modernismThe notion that the antithesis to Western culture might besomething essentially pluralistic moves us into the domainof post-modernism (with which Foucault, quoted above, isoften associated). Here I find myself at variance withMcGilchrist. He is scathing about post-modernism, whoseart, he proclaims, ‘becomes a game in which the emptinessof a wholly insubstantial world, in which there is nothingbeyond the set of terms we have used in vain to constructmeaning, is allowed to speak for its own vacuity.’ McGilchristis a lover of Western culture as it was in its prime, when itsuccessfully combined the logical precision of which the lefthemisphere was capable with the ability of the righthemisphere to relate to the presences of the particular. Inour present situation, however, we need the aid of thoseforces antithetical to our current left-hemispheric Westernculture, and we find them lumped together with somestrange bedfellows under the term ‘post-modern’. Someother cultures in this category may not embraceMcGilchrist’s ‘Other’ at all; they may reject rationality (as itused to be), or compassion; or they may hold that ‘anythinggoes’. We may well ask, do we really have to get mixed upwith these?So we need to tread carefully. We find ourselves at a fork

in the road of history, a place where ‘three roads meet’ – asin the account of the journey of Oedipus, where at a dividingof the road he unknowingly slew his father and so caused abarren desolation of plague to fall upon the people ofThebes. For us now, there is behind us the road from thepast, from the unitary culture of the classical world and therenaissance, while to the future lie the two roads of eitheran empty rejection of anything beyond our own fancies, or acreative engagement within a plurality of ways of knowing.McGilchrist’s argument, that by transforming ourenvironment we have disabled the right hemisphere,indicates that there may be no way back along the road fromwhich we have come.The writer Jacques Derrida, an initiator of the

‘deconstruction’ school of post-modernism, occupies adefining place at this junction. In many ways he fitsMcGilchrist’s image of left-hemisphere dominance,sometimes approaching the autistic spectrum. He bringsforward comprehensive arguments against the suppositionthat words denote real things or that our verbal accountscan be grounded in absolute real presences. We should notecarefully what is being said here: Derrida is not saying thatthere is nothing out there, or that there is no presencing asit is perceived by the right hemisphere. Rather, he is denyingthat there are things out there which are both real presencesand graspable by language, and he is unfolding theimplications of this for our language-based culture. If our

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10 Network Review Summer 2010

and the Western Church where there was an increasingbreakdown of communication between our hemispheres,recovered in the Renaissance, acquired the seeds of disasterin the enlightenment and then descended with only minorrespites into the pits of post-modernism and scientism. Iwould add the reminder that for most of this time Westernculture was manifested in only a small minority of humanbeings, even in the geographical areas where it was present,though its material influence became increasingly dominant.The crucial final step in this history is the abyss of my

opening quotation, caused by a self-locking phenomenonwhich might, according to McGilchrist, make our currentdysfunctionality irretrievable. The argument is as follows.First, McGilchrist shows that the flourishing of our lives

depends on the immediate holistic relational grasp of theworld that comes from the right hemisphere.

The right hemisphere pays attention to the Other,whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves, withwhich it sees itself in profound relation. It is deeplyattracted to, and given life by, the relationship, thebetweenness, that exists with this Other. By contrast,the left hemisphere pays attention to the virtual worldthat it has created, which is self-consistent, but self-contained, ultimately disconnected from the Other,making it powerful, but ultimately only able to operateon, and to know, itself.1 p. 93

Next, we apply this to the present situation. The majority ofthe world’s population now lives in cities, and in these thephysical environment is almost completely human-created.Moreover, it is created through a culture dominated by theoperations of the left-hemisphere. So the physical environmentreflects the restricted perception of the left hemisphere. Whenthe right hemisphere reaches out, seeking the Other in thissituation, it does so through a mental and physicalenvironment that reflects only the left-hemispheric self-image.So it may now be ‘impossible for the right hemisphere toescape from the hall of mirrors, to reach out to something thattruly was Other than, beyond, the human mind.’ Cast adrift withno living, vital awareness of our situation, we act chaotically ina way that leads us into yet further alienation from the worldbeyond our own creation, leading us to increase yet further thebarriers separating us from it.I think we need first to grasp the alarming extent to which

this analysis is correct, but then to go beyond it in order to seewhere hope lies for restoring the wholeness of being human:namely in the nature of cultures other than Western culture,but developing alongside it. The lethal self-locking way of doingand thinking represented by Western culture may be dominant,but it is not the only culture, even among genetically Westernpeople in Western countries. Many alternatives to thisdominant culture can be recognised, constituting one part ofwhat Michel Foucault called ‘subjugated knowledges:’

a whole series of knowledges that have been disqualifiedas nonconceptual knowledges … that are below therequired level of erudition and scientificity ... theknowledge of the psychiatrized, the patient, the nurse ...of the delinquent ... a particular knowledge that is local,regional, or differential’5, p. 7.

June Boyce-Tillman6called these instances ‘subjugated waysof knowing’. They vary in extent from individual voices raisedin their own particularity, to movements and groups such asfeminists and ecological communities which, through theirsharing and propagating of ideas and ways of acting,constitute cultures, as I am using the term here. Moreover,these are not just a variety of cultures in addition to Western

By ‘spirituality’ here I mean the corpus of know-howpassed on through a particular culture that enables itsmembers to engage deliberately and systematically inrelationship with the Other via the knowing of the righthemisphere. McGilchrist says little about this, perhapsbecause spirituality (as opposed to theology) has not playeda conspicuous part in the dominant Western culture on whichhe concentrates. A succession of authors have, on the otherhand, explored the similarities and differences between theway Derrida points to spirituality and the way religiousteaching points to it, particularly with reference toNagarjuna’s approach to Buddhism10. Though the similaritiesbetween Derrida’s ideas and spirituality are important, so isthe difference: it is that the Buddhist and the Christiancontemplatives have already made a commitment toengagement with a religious tradition, with its inheritedspiritual know-how ( even when they go on to revolutionise orsubvert this tradition). Derrida seems to have felt a pulltowards religion, but it was not a committed engagement.Following the work of Jennifer Crawford, I will argue that it isthis dimension of engagement, with its implication ofrelationship, that allows us to move forward from the hall ofmirrors feared by McGilchrist and from the void into which weare plunged by Derrida.Crawford11 describes how, when confronted with Derrida’s

absolute limit to the sayable, we have two alternatives. Thefirst is to simply return to games with connections betweenwords and stories that are thought to be devoid of meaning.‘The second,’ she continues, ‘is more radical. It involvesstepping beyond the limitations of language into thenondiscursive domain that till now, within the Westerntradition, has been consigned to the realm of spirituality.’ (p.49) The concept of ‘stepping beyond’ Derrida’s ‘limit’corresponds to Isabel Clarke’s adoption4, within the ICSmodel, of the term ‘transliminal’ (‘beyond the boundary’) forthis domain, which she shows is the territory not only ofspirituality but also of psychosis.Crawford then goes on to describe how this strategy of

stepping beyond has given rise to a wide range of distinctengaged paths within the post-modern movement. It is astrategy based on restoring communication between the leftand right hemispheres within the individual. The academic,for example, will not draw an end to her job at the limit of thesayable, any more than a novelist would regard the encounterwith mystery as irrelevant to his craft. But to restore thiscommunication between hemispheres in the post-modernage requires a transformation both of rationality (both-andthinking) and of spirituality. Engagement is the key to both.Engagement consists of a committed attention to one’s

path. For Crawford the stance involved in stepping beyondthe limit defined by Derrida (and beyond the exclusive use ofthe left hemisphere) is called by her ‘attentive love“ (p. 51);for the scientist it is more like attentive fascination; and forthe political leader (we might hope) attentive action. Theyhave in common the factor of ‘attentiveness to the other asOther.’ Each stepping beyond the left hemispheresubsequently generates a revised left hemisphere discoursethat helps us navigate with greater precision. This process isdescribed by McGilchrist in terms of the right hemispherepassing its insight back to the left hemisphere. Thedifference from McGilchrist, however, is that, because thereis no graspable absolute, no final ‘meta-narrative’ (in post-modern terminology), the discourses generated will andshould be different for each culture. The activity oftheology/prayer in spirituality and the activity oftheory/practice in science will have their own discourses in

words have no solid ground in reality, then what is to becomeof the classical concepts of logic and truth? His work wasdevoted to systematically showing how this approachundermined (deconstructed) the presuppositions of ourwritings, thus burning the boats that we might naivelysuppose could achieve a return to the past. This is in someways a deeper reason for there being no going back, becausea return to our past ways of thinking would, in the light ofthis, be fundamentally inauthentic. George Steiner, after acareful and sympathetic analysis of Derrida in his booksupporting Real Presences8, agreed that On its own termsand planes of argument ... the challenge of deconstructiondoes seem to me irrefutable (his emphasis), and he stressedthat in order to go forward we must first be brought to lookinto the void that remained after the deconstruction oflanguage; otherwise our going forward would remain a sham.Yet Derrida did not rest at this point. His writings remind

me of a tiger constantly pacing round the walls of itsenclosure, the boundary of language, seeking, if not a wayout, at least a glimpse of something beyond. He points tothis in an essay9 based on a talk given at a conference in1986 in Jerusalem (the city held sacred by three majorreligions) entitled ‘Languages of the Unsayable’. In openinghis lecture, he confessed that “Even before starting toprepare this lecture, ... I knew that I would have to do this inJerusalem. ‘This then opened up the topics of obligation andnegative theology (theology based on denying any knowledgeof the divine), both of which started in language but thenwent beyond it. He sets out the postulate that an intentionalnot-saying, as in the case of, for example ‘a secret’ or ‘aprayer’ which speaks not of but to the Other, can be a moreauthentic move than saying.An important role in Derrida’s essay is played by Plato,

someone whose inner contradictions are eerily reminiscentof those of Derrida, and evocative of our current dilemma. Onone hand we have the authoritarian Plato of the Republic,castigated by McGilchrist as a strongly left-hemispherecharacter. On the other hand we have the Plato of theSymposium where appeal is made to the woman’s wisdom ofthe seer Diotima, of the Phaedrus in which Socrates isdepicted as veiling his face in order to engage in a discourseon love, or, as in this essay by Derrida, of the Timaeus wherePlato struggles to speak the unspeakable in presenting theconcept of chora (literally, ‘place’) as something‘apprehended without the help of sense, by a kind ofspurious reason, and is hardly real; which we beholding as ina dream ...’ Chora is a state of absence, of a significantabsence that enables form to become present, and Derridatakes this as one model of the way in which a negation canlead to a positive understanding. He then develops thisfurther by examining the sayings of the ‘negative theologian’(i.e. apophatic theologian) pseudo-Dionysius. We have herein the detailed reasoning of Derrida a transformation of thenature of (left hemisphere) rationality that enables humanityto go forward to an authentic linking of this rationality withthe (right hemisphere) experiential wisdom of subjugatedways of knowing.

SpiritualityLike Wittgenstein in the Tractatus, with its renowned ending‘whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’,Derrida in the holy city of Jerusalem points to spirituality(Wittgenstein’s ‘mysticism’) as a way beyond. But whereasWittgenstein in his later work develops a more fluid use oflanguage, Derrida’s limit to the bounds of language remainsabsolute.

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their respective cultures, and even sometimes within thesame person. This is why we have to deal with an essentialplurality of cultures.In a situation of multiple interweaving cultures, the left

hemisphere is required to adopt a new logic in order to graspwhat is disclosed by the right hemisphere. What Crawfordrefers to as Other is not an absolute entity as it would be fora unitary culture, giving rise to a single meta-narrative andclassical logic. The Other is more like Plato’s chora, asdescribed by Derrida, manifesting as a quality of object-lessrelationship. There is a ‘real presencing’ within eachexperience beyond the limit, but not an object, no finite realpresence of the sort expected by the old rationality. Thecommitment required in order to take this path effectivelyand safely is commitment to a practice, a body of know-how,whether it is that of a spiritual tradition, a scientific training,or the uncodified knowledge of living that grows up in astable and coherent society. What gives this spirituality itsstrength is that it operates at the inter-personal level, withina culture, as well as at a trans-personal level: my neighbouris also the Other, in Crawford’s sense. This is possiblebecause of the nature of right-hemisphere knowing, rootedin relationship.What makes this more than a pipe dream is the fact that

many forms of this engaged knowing are already amongstus, as documented in7. They are subjugated, but rapidlyfinding their strength and voice. The high dyke of modernistleft-hemisphere domination has not crumbled, but theseways of knowing are boring the holes that will undermine it.

References1 McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and his Emissary: the

Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World,Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2009.

2 McGilchrist, Iain, ‘The divided brain and the making of theWestern world’, Network Review, 101, pp 3–6, 2009.

3 Teasdale, John D and Barnard, Philip J, Affect,Cognition and Change, Laurence Erlbaum Associates,London, 1995.

4 Clarke, Isabel, ‘Psychosis and Spirituality: TheDiscontinuity Model’ in I Clarke (ed.) Psychosis andSpirituality: Consolidating the New Paradigm (SecondEdition), pp. 101–114, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, 2010

5 Foucault, Michel, Society Must Be Defended: Lecturesat the Collège de France, 1975–76 (trans. DavidMacey), Picador, New York, 2003.

6 Boyce-Tillman, June, ‘Subjugated Ways of Knowing’ in[7], pp. 8–33, 2005.

7 Clarke, Chris, ‘Ways of Knowing’, Science andMysticism Today, Imprint Academic, Exeter, 2005.

8 Steiner, George, Real Presences, London: Faber andFaber, 1989.

9 Derrida, Jacques, ‘How to avoid speaking: Denials’ inLanguages of the Unsayable: the Play of Negativity inLiterature and Literary Theory (eds S. Budick et al.),Columbia University Press, New York, 1989.

10 Magliola, Robert, Derrida on the Mend, PurdueUniversity Press, West Lafayette, Ind, 1984.

11 Crawford, Jennifer, Spiritually-Engaged Knowledge: theattentive heart, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2005.

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Queens View, Loch Tummel by Oliver Robinson

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Marilyn Monk

Recent Developments inScience and Medicine

Co-operating sperm swim fasterSperm have evolved clever strategies in their race tofertilise an egg. In some rodent species, sperm from onemale can recognise each other and form trains by hookingtheir heads together. The ‘sperm train’ of tens of cellsswims faster towards the egg than the individual sperm.Fisher and Hoekstra (Harvard University, Cambridge,

Massachusetts) compared train-making behaviour of spermcells in two species of the deer mouse (Peromyscusmaniculatus and P. polionotus). Sperm from each species,labelled with different coloured dyes, teamed up with spermof their own species when mixed in a petri dish.This feat of recognition of sperm of own kind was also

seen between brother males in the promiscuous P.maniculatus species, where females mate with a number ofmales consecutively. In this species, sperm from differentmales (brothers) mixed together in a dish, recognise eachother if they have come from the same male. The level ofdiscrimination between littermates is the same as thatbetween species.In the more monogamous species P. polionotus, sperm

have not evolved this ability to compete between brothermales as they are unlikely to be in competition for the egg.So in this case mixed sperm trains are formed.Most people think of sperm as independent single cells

although, in reality, sperm are highly differentiated and it isnot so surprising that co-operative behaviours may beselected by evolution. However, only one sperm can fertilisean egg so the supporting sperm in the trains sacrifice theirchances to fertilise in order to help a brother sperm win therace to the egg. The extra sperm in the train also help tobore through the egg membranes.

ReferenceFisher, HS & Hoekstra, HE (2010) ‘Competition drivescooperation among closely related sperm of deer mice.’Nature 463:801-3.

The human genome is 10 years oldIt is 10 years since the private company, Celera (then atRockville, Maryland), and the publicly funded internationalcompany, the Human Genome Project, announced thecompletion of their first draft sequences of the humangenome at a televised press conference attended by BillClinton and Tony Blair. This extraordinary technical featheralded a future of molecular medicine to prevent, treat andcure all disease. But, as is often the case with hypeassociated with every new breakthrough in science, we areyet to see the promised advances in medicine. Progress isslow in the translation of basic research to clinicalapplicationMany other large scale scientific endeavours followed the

publication of the human sequence, viz., the mapping ofcommon variants in the human sequence, the identification ofevery functional gene in a genome and, with the increasedefficiency and lower costs of sequencing, the completegenome sequences of many other animals and plants. One

can envisage a future when every individual will carry hisgenome DNA base sequence on his personal computer.However, despite the huge deluge of data generated by high-throughput technologies, meaningful biological insights arerare. Rather, a greater complexity than previously envisagedis revealed The particular genes we inherit are just one partof the story – the hardware. It is now becoming clear that theprogramming of gene function by our interaction with internaland external environment (epigenetics) is more important indetermining who we are and our susceptibility to disease.

ReferenceErika Check Hayden (2010) ‘Human genome at ten: Life iscomplicated.’ Nature 464, 664-667

What your genes doNow that we can identify each and every one of our genes,their sequence and variations from individual to individual,we want to know the function of each of these genes. Aremarkable paper published by Neuman and colleagues(European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg,Germany) sets out to systematically disable each of the21,000 protein coding genes, one by one, in human cells andrecord the resulting cellular behaviour under the microscope.After the silencing of each specific gene, the chromosomesof the cells were labelled with fluorescent dye, studied bytime lapse imaging for two days, followed by computationalimage processing of the huge amount of data generated (19million cell divisions). This allowed identification of hundredsof human genes involved in diverse biological functions suchas cell division, chromosome alignment and segregation, andcell migration and survival. Scientists around the world arecontacting the lead author, Jan Ellenberg, requesting the‘movie’ associated with a defect in their favourite gene.In another approach, Eric Davidson and colleagues

(Division of Biology, CALTECH, Pasadena, USA) systematicallyablate, one by one, the regulatory genes (transcriptionfactors) that control the development and shaping up of thebody of the sea urchin. The effects on the body structure andon the expression of other genes defines how networks ofgenes function in concert to progress development. Commonprinciples in gene regulatory networks and function may beextrapolated to other organisms, from fruit flies to humans.Davidson sees the advent of the human genome sequenceinfluencing scientists to work in systems of increasingcomplexity rather than with one single gene. Working withsimple model animals like the sea urchin enables morefreedom to manipulate and experiment in order to unraveland simplify complex regulatory systems of development.And working with the bigger picture to uncover the commonrules sometimes allows a clearer view than the morereductionist approach looking at the component parts

ReferencesNeumann B et al (2010).‘Phenotypic profiling of the humangenome by time-lapse microscopy reveals cell divisiongenes.’ Nature 464:721-727.

Oliveri P, Tu Q, Davidson EH (2008). ‘Global regulatory logicfor specification of an embryonic cell lineage.’ Proc NatlAcad Sci U S A.105:5955-62

Patents on breast cancer genes judgedinvalidThe awarding of patents for specific genes and genesequences has been a controversial issue for severaldecades. Nevertheless, courts in the US and in Europe haveupheld these patents so far. Mutations in the genes BRCA1and BRCA2 are associated with an increased risk ofdeveloping breast and ovarian cancer. Following thediscovery of these genes, the diagnostic tests for inheritedsusceptibility were patented by a number of companies.Myriad Genetics in Salt Lake City, for example, charges$3000 per test. In March 2010, in a US district court, ajudge ruled these patents invalid (see report by MeredithWadman in Nature 39 March 2010). This decision obviouslyhas major implications for the biotechnology industry.The plaintiffs - individual physicians, patients and American

societies and associations - claimed that the patents restrictscientific research and medical care and that the genes areproducts of nature and thus not patentable. The judge ruledon the latter argument - that the purification of a naturalproduct like a gene does not render it patentable. How thiswill affect other companies and their technologies and genebased patents remains to be seen. Genetic testing iscurrently expanding beyond testing for mutations in one ortwo genes to assays on many genes and indeed to wholegenome sequencing. And if a ruling can be based on what isa product of nature, one wonders whether so-called syntheticlife forms will be exempt from this ruling. Myriad will appealthe patent.

Learning and memoryMemory formation results from the modification of synapsesand neuronal circuits (plasticity) in the brain. Plasticity, andbehavioral memory, are favoured by coordinated actionpotential timing across populations of neurons giving rise tooscillations of different frequencies (recorded in local fieldpotentials). Scientists at the California Institute ofTechnology, Pasadena, California, measured the activity ofsingle neurons along with the local field potential in humansengaged in a memory task. Subjects with electrodesimplanted in the hippocampus and amygdala were shown100 images followed by another set of 100 images half ofwhich were new. For each image in the memory session, theparticipants had to indicate whether they had seen it beforeand how confident they were about their response. It wasfound that successful memory formation was associatedwith coordinated timing of the spike of individualhippocampal and amygdala neuronal activity with the localtheta oscillation - neurons fired in response to an imageclose to either the peak or the trough of the oscillation. Thestrength of this phase-locking predicts the strength of thememory being formed.

ReferenceRutishauser U, Ross IB, Mamelak AN, Schuman EM. (2010)

‘Human memory strength is predicted by theta-frequencyphase-locking of single neurons.’ Nature. 464:903-907.

Stem cells and the VaticanStem cells are pluripotent cells capable of generating arange of differentiated cells and/or tissues. Their discoveryhas opened the new field of regenerative medicine –transplantation of stem cells and/or their derivative cells

into the body for the treatment of injury or disease. Thearchetypal stem cell is the embryonic stem cell (totipotent)which has the capacity to make all cells of the body includingthe germ cells - eggs and sperm. However, the production ofembryonic stem cells requires the destruction of a humanembryo, albeit at a very early stage when the embryo canexist outside the body and consists of only 100 to 200 cells.More recently it has been shown that differentiated cells of

the body (somatic cells) may be reprogrammed to generatetotipotent stem cells – either by the transplantation of thecell nucleus (containing the DNA genome) into an egg, or bythe introduction into the cell of four genes whose productsdirect reprogramming. The latter stem cell is called an IPScell (Induced Pluripotent Stem cell) but whatever its mode ofderivation, or what it is called, it is in essence an embryonicstem cell capable of generating a new individual (as shownin the mouse).The Vatican, strictly against the generation of therapeutic

stem cells from a human embryo, and also the experimentalgeneration of similar cells, has announced its intention tofinance research (two million Euros) into the use of adultstem cells for therapeutic purposes. Adult stem cells, unlikeembryonic stem cells, are restricted in their potential togenerate cells of just the one tissue. The research projectwill be carried out at the University of Maryland’s School ofMedicine in the US into the use of intestinal adult stem cellsto treat disease.

Hubble Space Telescope is 20 years oldIn April 1990, the space shuttle Discovery launched theHubble Space Telescope into orbit 575 kilometers fromEarth. Hubble, named after American astronomer EdwinHubble, has now been orbiting Earth for 20 years, sendingback images in the visible, near-infrared and ultraviolet partsof the spectrum. (For some beautiful images see websitebelow.)Katharine Sanderson writes in Nature in April 2010 on

Hubble’s troubled beginnings and history. The NationalAcademy of Sciences first recommended the building of aspace telescope in 1962 and the idea was carried forward byBob O’Dell (now at Vanderbilt University, Nashville,Tennessee). The telescope survived through manyunexpected problems to be solved – such as blurring mirroror solar wind shaking - and underwent many servicingmissions performed by astronauts delivered by the shuttle.Hubble today is 60 times more powerful than it was in 1990.In its 20 years Hubble has proved the existence of dark

energy and dark matter, informed us on the life and death ofsupernova, and provided many beautiful pictures asevidenced in the link below. Robert Kirshner (HarvardUniversity, Boston) studying supernovae (explosions of dyingstars) with Hubble provided the evidence that the expansionof our universe is accelerating – not contracting as previouslythought. And today many eager scientists compete to get onto the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble will still be there forthe next few years but after that it might be replaced by theJames Webb Space Telescope, set to launch in 2014.

ReferenceSee http://www.nature.com/news/specials/hubble/

slideshow.html

Psychological disorder in mice linked todefect in immune systemIn 2002, Greer and Capecchi published that a timed deficiencyin a single gene called Hoxb8, a gene normally associated withestablishment of body plan in development, caused mice toexhibit excessive and compulsive grooming behaviour resulting

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in loss of hair and skin wounds. The mouse behaviour isthought to be a model for obsessive compulsive disorder inthe human but this is yet to be verified. It was generallyassumed that abnormal behaviour resulted from someimpairment of neurological function. More recently, Capecchiand colleagues (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Universityof Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, USA) have takentheir research further and shown that the Hoxb8 mutationresults in a deficiency in microglia cells in the brain. Thesemicroglia cells originate in the bone marrow and migrate to thebrain where they are responsible for immune surveillance,protecting the brain from infection and mopping up debris.Significantly, transplantation of wild type bone marrow havinga good copy of the gene rescues the mutant mice from theirpathological phenotype. Conversely, some of the normal micethat received bone marrow transplants from Hoxb8 mutantmice began to groom compulsively and developed barepatches. Immunological dysfunctions have been previouslylinked to psychiatric disorders, but the causative relationshipshave been unclear. This study is unique in that it establishesa causal link although it is not clear how a dysfunction in theimmune system causes defective neural circuits in psychiatricdisorders.

ReferencesChen, S.-K. et al. (2010). ‘Hematopoietic origin ofpathological grooming in Hoxb8 mutant mice.’ Cell141:775-85.

Greer, J. M. & Capecchi, M. R. (2002). ‘Hoxb8 is requiredfor normal grooming behavior in mice.’ Neuron 33:23-34.

The crop circle evolvesCrop circles are becoming more and more intricate andbeautiful (see report by Richard Taylor, Professor of physics,psychology and art, Department of Physics, University ofOregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA, in Nature June, 2010). In thefirst scientific publication on crop circles (Nature 22,290–291; 1880) John Capron speculated that the ‘circularspots’ were induced by cyclonic winds. But crop circles havebeen bewildering the British since the 1600s, and today thecrop-circle phenomenon has spread to Europe, Russia,North America, Japan and India. The complexity of thedesigns — many of which have a mathematical basis — hasescalated in the past two decades, reflecting a serious andscience-literate artistic movement.Artists Douglas Bower and David Chorley began creating a

series of circles in Hampshire’s barley and wheat fields afterreading old news reports about a pattern imprinted onAustralian marshlands, supposedly by a UFO. After 10 yearsof secretly constructing circles, the two announced theirhoax to the press in 1991.The covert nature of the crop-circle movement fuels a cat

and mouse game between artist and researcher. The artistscreate their designs during the night, leaving the scene freefrom evidence of their presence. Early artists used woodenplanks, string and garden rollers, and bar stools to vault overregions of undisturbed crop. Today, increased technologicalexpertise enables more complex patterns – the use ofcomputers, laser pointers, satellite equipment andmicrowaves (crop stalks must be flattened rather thanbroken). Last summer, a 180-metre-long jellyfish arrived in abarley field in Oxfordshire, UK (microwave radiation, GlobalPositioning System receivers and lasers are suspected).Each season’s designs are published in a catalogue andtheir artistic evolution is discussed by dedicated societies.

Free-riding surfing crocsThe widespread distribution of the estuarine crocodiles(Crocodylus porosus) throughout the oceanic islands of the

South-east Pacific suggests these crocodiles travel overlarge distances in oceans spanning more than 10,000square kilometres. Crocodiles are poor swimmers, so howdid they manage this dispersal strategy? Craig Franklin andcolleagues (School of Biological Sciences, University ofQueensland, Brisbane, Australia) have shown that thecrocodiles have evolved the behavioural strategy of surfingthe water currents to facilitate their migration, Monitoring thecrocodiles movement with acoustic telemetry they found thatthe animals only engaged on long distance travel when thecurrent directions were favourable. Depth and temperaturemeasurements from implanted transmitters showed thatthey remained at the water surface during travel but woulddive to the river substratum or climb out on the river bank(thus increasing their temperature as they basked in the sun)if current flow direction became unfavourable. The crocodilesknow when the current is flowing in the direction they want totravel. Correlations can be drawn between the migratorybehaviour and cognitive abilities of crocodiles and birds.Previous studies have shown that both animals use magneticcues to navigate.

ReferencesCampbell HA, Watts ME, Sullivan S, Read MA, Choukroun S,Irwin SR, Franklin CE. (2010) ‘Estuarine crocodiles ridesurface currents to facilitate long-distance travel.’ J AnimEcol. 7 Jun 2010.

Acupuncture works for miceAcupuncture is used worldwide to relieve pain. However,there have been problems in proving its efficacy in a numberof clinical trials and in understanding in scientific terms itsmode of action. Acupuncture is thus generally disregarded inmainstream medicine. Some would argue that acupunctureacts via a placebo response in the patient.Now Maiken Nedergard and colleagues (Center for

Translational Science, University of Rochester MedicalCenter, Rochester, New York) have a scientific explanation forthe efficacy of acupuncture in mice. They showed that theneuromodulator molecule, adenosine, produced by injuredtissue and known to have pain dulling properties, is releasedduring acupuncture in mice. Pain was induced in the hindpaw of the mouse, followed by acupuncture at a point belowthe ‘knee’ called the ‘Zusanli’ point. Following acupuncturethe mouse was less sensitive to heat and touch. The painrelief required the adenosine receptor on the cells - if thereceptor was blocked by the injection of an adenosinereceptor antagonist the acupuncture was not effective. Inaddition, inhibition of enzymes involved in adenosinedegradation, potentiated the acupuncture-elicited increase inadenosine, as well as its pain dulling effect. However, it wasalso noteworthy that acupuncture was not effective if appliedto the rodents’ pain-free left legs suggesting that there is nocentral mechanism. It is not clear how local release ofadenosine could explain the effect of acupuncture againstheadaches. The work might account for only some of thetreatment’s supposed benefits.

ReferencesGoldman N et al. (2010) ‘Adenosine A1 receptors mediatelocal anti-nociceptive effects of acupuncture.’ NatNeurosci. 2010 Jul;13(7):883-8.

Marilyn Monk is UCL Emeritus Professor of MolecularEmbryology at the Institute of Child Health researching gene

expression and its regulation in development and cancer.She is also an Alexander Technique Teacher

and Psychosynthesis Counsellor

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Craig Venter and colleagues recently published their workon a synthesised life form1. Once again scientists arecharged with playing God and the associated hype andscaremongering promise cures and treatments for all sortsof human and planetary ailments, threaten a future ofunknown dangers from genetically manipulated life forms,and demand a re-analysis of the meaning of life and God.The scientists first carefully determined the sequence of

the total genomic DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) (around onemillion base pairs) of a simple bacterium called Mycoplasmamycoides. Overlapping segments of the complete sequencewere then copied (synthesised) in the lab by the orderedstitching together of the four DNA bases. They then clonedand assembled the segments of the copied sequence inyeast cells, and transplanted the complete copy of themycoides genome into a closely related bacterium,Mycoplasma capricolum, whose own genome had beenpreviously removed. The recipient Mycoplasma ‘shell’ thusprovided the necessary cellular environment for thesynthesised genome (the mycoides copy) to direct cell growthand cell division and perpetuate the bacterial culture asMycoplasma mycoides. The copied genome directingbacterial cell growth and division could be identified anddistinguished from the original mycoides genome by a fewsequence differences incorporated during the synthesis.This is a considerable technical feat and is to be admired.

But it is not a new life form. It is a copied genome usingsynthesised building blocks and it required the yeastintermediary step and components of a pre-existing Mycoidescarrier cell to set growth and cell division in motion. It wouldbe really impressive if science could create life from scratch -from something equivalent to the primaeval ‘ooze’. In thisrespect, life as we know it originally only happened once andis encapsulated in the central dogma - DNA makes RNA(ribonucleic acid) makes protein - though what really camefirst is not clear. The wonder of the discovery of the structureof DNA was that, in one eureka moment, we could see in thedouble helix the essence of life itself. The implicit code in theorder of the four bases directed the synthesis of the proteinsof function and cell structure; the unwinding of the doublehelix and exact copying of the strands to be inherited bydaughter cells (‘like begets like’) ensured life would go on inperpetuity; and the occasional variation or copying errorexplained the mutation and variation that underlies selectionand evolution of new life forms.Today all living species derive from one common DNA

ancestor originating on this planet (or maybe, as some think,on some other planet in outer space with DNA arriving onEarth via meteorite). All known life - from viruses, bacteriaand moulds, to plants and trees, to insects, animals and us- is all based on the same the same DNA to RNA to proteinmodel. How else could life happen? It is difficult to conjureup a different form of life. From Star Wars to Avatar, sciencefiction still imagines so-called new life forms based on ourown original plan. In terms of science synthesising new life,readers might be interested in a flight of fancy (currently)step-by-step instruction for the re-creation of life in ‘Let’smake a mammoth’ by Henry Nichols2.

Back to Venter’s synthesised microbial genomes. Big claimsare being made for the possible future uses and benefits ofgenomes synthesised to order to perform special tasks - frommopping up excess carbon dioxide, dealing with oil spills, aidingin new drug and environmentally-friendly fuel design, and so on.But it is hard to believe that inventing genes from scratch wouldbe more efficient than using the efforts of billions of years ofevolution honing and perfecting performance of different genesand their proteins for different purposes for different organismsin different situations. We already have the technology torecombine and splice different genes together, and to introducethem into carrier hosts. Synthetic biology of the future willprobably combine man-made and evolution-made segments ofDNA for specific purposes.The new addition of synthetic genomes to the tool kit fuels

the horror of some environmentalists who are terrified of whatnew combinations of genes designed or modified by thegenetic engineers could get up to if they were to escape. Whatis this fear of scientists playing God? It is fear of the unknownand a lack of trust in those in power in a troubled world. Withall new discoveries there is fear of unforeseen accident ormisuse of knowledge. But regulations for containment andcareful surveillance already operate in science andtechnology. All research proposals and grant proposals mustpass the local ethical committees of the host researchinstitute as well as national ethical committees. Scientiststhemselves are responsible for their discoveries and theirconsequences and, with peer review, keep an eye on eachother. All knowledge can be used for good or evil.However, fear of misuse must not hinder basic academic

research. Many, if not most, major breakthroughs in scienceand medicine in the past have happened as a consequenceof an anomaly, or an unexpected discovery, in the course ofbasic research. The alarming shift from basic research toapplied research (projected useful outcome has been part ofgrant writing for the last three decades) has beenaccompanied by a dearth of exciting new discoveries. Whilethe synthesis of a copy of an existing genome capable ofdirecting the growth and division of a cell is not the creationof life, it is nevertheless a very exciting development inacademic research of this kind. We do not know yet how itwill be to our benefit and the extent of its potential.Finally, what does the chemical synthesis of a genome say

about God and religion? Nothing. Whatever one’sunderstanding of God, it certainly does not make Godredundant. Man, as scientist, has been re-organising andrearranging the elements of life and existence forever.Existence itself is a wonderful play of energy and mattercoming in and out of form of increasing complexity in aninterconnected oneness in space and time. Maybe God isnot separate from his creation.

1 Venter et al, ‘Creation of a bacterial cell controlled by achemically synthesized genome,’ Science 20 May 2010,http://www. sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/science.1190719

2 Henry Nicholls, ‘Let’s make a mammoth,’ Nature 20November 2008 (http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081119/pdf/456 310a.pdf).

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Marilyn Monk

Synthesising a DNA Genomeis a Major Feat - but is itcreating new life?

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levels of psycho-spiritual engagement and adaptation withinconsciousness (Collins 2001, 2008a, 2008b). In this essayI propose that human’s possess the reflexive capability toengage more deeply with transpersonal states ofconsciousness, through the use of spirituality asintelligence; thereby facilitating change – from the currentglobal and spiritual states of emergency – towards thecreation of an improved future.

Spiritual Emergencies and the CurrentGlobal CrisisThe concept of spiritual emergency was based on therealization that people’s journeys of spiritual emergencecould sometimes result in spontaneous transformationalcrises (Grof & Grof 1989). The recognition of these spiritualcrises has provided greater awareness for how people’ssense of self can be overpowered when encounteringtranspersonal experiences (Collins 2008a). Thesetranspersonal encounters have the potential to be sooverwhelming that they can result in people receivingtreatment from the mental health services (Collins, 2007a).Correspondingly, there have been important developmentswithin psychology and psychiatry that have provided greaterdifferentiation and clarification between mental healthproblems and spiritual problems (Lukoff et al. 1996).However, at a collective level, the awareness of spiritualemergencies could be developed further, in terms of themeaning and resonances that these transpersonal stateshave with the current global crisis. Spiritual emergencies maywell be revealing a growing edge within collectiveconsciousness, which, if integrated could help to challengethe established norms that inform the boundaries ofconsensus opinion (Collins 2008b).Spiritual emergencies present mainstream societies with a

transpersonal view of reality (Collins 2008a), which couldcreate a shift in collective consciousness and the qualitiesof people’s lived experience (Collins 1998), thereby,stimulating new perceptions, connections, and meaning inlife. For example, the antecedents for experiencing spiritualemergencies are often linked to people’s natural sensitivitieswith non ordinary reality, which can include feeling at onewith the universe, or experiencing a strong inner knowing

IntroductionThere has been a growing interest in the phenomenonknown as spiritual emergency in recent years, following thepioneering work of Stanislav & Christina Grof and others(Grof & Grof 1989). Furthermore, developments within thepsychological and psychiatric literature have noted thecomplexities and possibilities for differentiating religious andspiritual problems from mental health problems (Lukoff et al.1996). These important developments have provided acontext for people to share their personal narratives oftransformation following encounters with spiritualemergencies (Collins 2007a, 2008a). However, whilstdiscussions about spiritual emergencies within the healthprofessional literature are highly important, there is also acorresponding need to consider the meaning of spiritualemergencies in light of the current global crisis, and theimplications they may have for inspiring transformationswithin collective consciousness (Collins 2008b).The scale of the current global situation has been well

documented in a report by the World Federation of UnitedNations Associations (WFUNA): State of the Future (Glenn etal. 2008). This report has highlighted the need to urgentlytackle issues such as climate change, the effects of anincreasing global population, and an ever growing demand forresources such as food, fresh water and fuel. The report hascalled for deep and radical change in human behaviours,which, if acted upon, could become a tipping point fortransformation rather than destruction. It is instructive tonote that the current global crisis has been described as astate of emergency (Laszlo 2009), which may be revealingthe presence of a collective spiritual emergency (Laszlo et al.2003). Spiritual emergencies connect people to atranspersonal dimension of consciousness that goes beyondconventional notions of identity (Collins 2007a), which mayalso reveal intimations of life’s interconnectedness.Moreover, these types of transpersonal encounters could besignificant for evolving human consciousness.The current global state of emergency has many

resonances with the experiences of spiritual emergencies, inthat they both pose challenges for transforming humanconsciousness. This transformational focus locates spiritualemergencies as part of the solution for establishing deeper

Mick Collins

Global Crisis andTransformation:From Spiritual Emergency toSpiritual Intelligence

Here Mick Collins expands on the idea of spiritual emergency and its relationship tospiritual intelligence as a feature of our current global transformation whereemergency is a symptom of emergence.

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articles (Grof & Grof 1989). These transpersonal experiences often

provide powerful intimations of being part of aninterconnected cosmos, as opposed to the overly self-referential modes of identity and functioning that are evidentwithin modern societies (Collins 2007a). Essentially,transpersonal experiences can act as powerful catalysts fordeveloping deep transformative potential. My ownexperience of a spiritual emergency in 1986 resulted in aprofound shift in consciousness, which has resulted in a life-long exploration of spirituality, meaning, and a deep respectfor the transformative value of such experiences (Collins2008a).It took me over 22 years before I found the words, and to a

greater extent, the courage to tell my story of spiritualemergency and transformation (Collins 2008a) due to fear ofbeing misunderstood and misinterpreted. However, myposition changed radically after reading a transcript of adialogue where Peter Russell, in conversation with ErvinLaszlo and Stanislav Grof, declared that modern westernconsumer orientated culture appears to be in the midst of acollective spiritual emergency (Laszlo et al. 2003). Thisassertion is difficult to refute when viewed from theperspective of the WFUNA Report (Glenn et al. 2008), whichhas highlighted the destructiveness of human actions in themodern world. Spiritual emergencies may possess greatuntapped potential for supporting and inspiring collectivetransformations in consciousness, due to the powerful waythat they can reveal intimations of unity. However, a key issueis whether human beings are committed enough to changefrom self-centred ways of living to more enlightened modes ofconsciousness (Russell 2009). Transpersonal experiences ofconsciousness may be pivotal for facilitating such a changeand transformation. For example, the depth and value oftranspersonal encounters are revealed in the words of aresearch participant who said:My senses were heightened ... I had an acute sense ofbeing a part of every-thing. It was an instant that didn’tlast long, but it was beyond time it was endless.

(Elam 2005, p.55).

These types of transpersonal experiences could reflect apowerful force for change in human consciousness (Laszlo2009). However, there has to be more recognition thattranspersonal experiences may also result in crises oftransformation, or spiritual emergencies, which need to besupported more fully in modern societies. The tensionsbetween the inner experiences of consciousness and the outerchallenges of a fast changing modern world are set to becomemore amplified in the current global context. Therefore,humans will need to evolve new ways of participating andengaging in lives that are more connected to deep reflexiveapproaches (Collins 2001). In this way, transpersonalexperiences could be valued for their contribution to creatingpowerful shifts in collective consciousness.

Spiritual Emergencies and theTrans-reflexive ImperativeSpiritual emergencies are threshold experiences that offer aradical revision for how human beings can restructure theirlives (Collins 2007a). The following proposition has identifiedthe value of exploring the boundaries of what it is to behuman:It is my thought that to formulate new conceptions aboutwhat it is to be human, or that which consciously is atthe very edge of ourselves as a species, we cannotsimply theorize or extrapolate but must explore the limitsof our subject matter with the growing edge of ourindividual selves. (White 1993, p.47).

Mainstream reactions to spiritual emergencies havepreviously resulted in their transformative potential beingsplit-off and not valued within modern societies (Collins2008a, 2008b), which has revealed a collective growingedge towards engaging the complexities of humanconsciousness. The reflexive task for humanity is to wake upto the transformative value of these deep transitional statesof consciousness. For example, research carried out intopeople’s exceptional human experiences have identified thepositive benefits associated with sharing narratives abouttranspersonal encounters, where participants expressedfeelings of transformational change, meaning, and well-being(Palmer & Braud 2002).There is a need to deepen the dialogue about the value of

transitional and transformative states of consciousness andhow these can be used to facilitate change within the contextof ever increasing global and spiritual states of emergency.An important first step for transforming consciousness isdependent upon a collective recognition that the currentglobal crisis is also a collective spiritual emergency, whichcalls for a radical revision for how we live our daily lives. Thefunction of transformative reflections has to be centred onrecognizing the deep potential that human’s possess forengaging change (Collins 2001). Indeed, the journey ofreflection holds great potential for transforming people,inclusive of their spiritual development (Wright 1998).Although, it must be recognized that deep journeys ofreflection also risk the possibility of triggeringtransformational crises.The transformative connections between reflection and

spiritual development (Wright 1998) have highlightedintriguing questions for how the insights gained frompeople’s journeys through spiritual emergencies can befactored into collective understandings about transformingconsciousness. Thus, spiritual emergencies pose aproblem-setting agenda within collective consciousness,which challenge modern societies with the task of findingappropriate reflective methods for transformingconsciousness. The exploration of deep transformativestates of consciousness will undoubtedly confront modernsocieties with a ‘reflexivity of discomfort’, which in thecontext of the current global and spiritual crises looks set toincrease:Thus a reflexivity that pushes toward an unfamiliar,towards the uncomfortable, cannot be a simple story ofsubjects, subjectivity and transcendence or self-indulgent telling. A tracing of the problematic ofreflexivity not as clarity, honesty, or humility, but aspractices of confounding disruptions – at times even afailure of our language and practices.

(Pillow 2003, p.192).

I propose that one of the central confounding disruptionsof our era, concerns the collective understanding of spiritualemergencies in relation to the global state of emergency. Ifspiritual emergencies are important indicators that revealthe growing edges of collective consciousness andtransformative potential, then a central question has to beconcerned with how such reflexivity can be developed?The root meaning of the modern word reflexivity is

associated with the Graeco-Roman term Parrhesia, which isconcerned with ‘truth-telling’ (Bleakley 2000, p.14). The actof reflection encourages people to take responsibility fortheir life stories, the structures surrounding those stories,and their subsequent actions in life (Bolton 2006). However,reflection in the context of global and spiritual states ofemergency requires two key conditions for change. The firstis the necessity for honest reflection about the scale ofhuman destruction in the modern world. The second

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concerns the acknowledgement of our transpersonalpotential, which not only focuses on self-responsibility, butalso about our attitudes towards one another, and all lifeforms. These two conditions could encourage people toengage in transformative narratives (Collins 2008a) thatsupport deep collective shifts in attitude and meaningfulchanges in consciousness.The reflexive value of transformative narratives – from the

personal to the transpersonal – is their ability to conveyaccounts of change that go far beyond individual interest.However, it has to be stated that transformative narrativeshave little value if they are viewed as a curiosity, rather thana catalyst for promoting deep change. For example, it hasbeen suggested that autobiographical reflexive narrativesprovide opportunities to ‘problematise and interrogate thestatus of the author.’ (Bleakley 2000, p.12). Yet, theconverse is also true, whereby the transformative narrativesof people’s spiritual emergencies pose counter-reflexivequestions that interrogate the status of collectiveconsciousness in the modern world. Thus, the reflexivityassociated with truth-telling could help to draw out thecollective attitudes, beliefs, and values that are resistant orfearful of change and transformation. Therefore, if allexperiences can be storied, then deep reflections can lead tofurther questioning about human thoughts and actions,including the political and cultural contexts in which theyoccur (Bolton 2006).In discussing the need for a transpersonal approach to

reflexivity, it is evident that people’s non ordinary experiencesof consciousness (Grof 2000) will require the developmentof a trans-reflexive position within consciousness (Collins2008a, 2008b), whereby, the very act of reflection candeepen people’s awareness and connection to nature, otherspecies, and the planet as a whole. This trans-reflexiveposition is concerned with developing a greater capacitywithin personal and collective consciousness (Collins2008a), which supports changes in people’s perceptions andactions (Collins 2007). There is no escaping the fact that thecurrent socio-political mind-set in the modern world iswoefully underprepared to take full advantage of thetransformational shift in consciousness that is both waitingand needing to happen. In the next section I discuss howspirituality as intelligence encompasses human beings’reflexive and problem solving capacities, which could beused to engage people’s transformative capabilities.

From Spiritual Emergency to SpiritualIntelligenceSo far in this essay I have highlighted that the current globalstate of emergency is also a spiritual emergency. I now go onto discuss how spirituality as intelligence could help to solvethe problems that are posed by the global and spiritualchallenges that are confronting humanity, including theintegration of transpersonal experiences of consciousnessinto daily life. Spirituality as intelligence is a capacity thatcould be cultivated within modern societies (Wilber 2005),which may enable people to reflect on the personal andcollective impact of the current global and spiritual crises,thereby recognizing how we have been cut off ‘from the deepcentre of ourselves through fragmentation, one-sidedness,pain and obstruction.’ (Thorne 2007, p.218).It is instructive to note that there are clear resonances

between spirituality as a state of emergency and spiritualityas intelligence. For example, spiritual emergencies are crisesof transformation precipitated by a transpersonal encounterfor which people are often unprepared. Whereas, spiritualityas intelligence is a conscious engagement with thetranspersonal dimension that connects people to a ‘widerstream of life.’ (Zohar & Marshall 2000, p.4). There is anevident relationship between the unexpected transpersonalexperiences that can trigger spiritual emergencies, comparedto the conscious use of spirituality as intelligence, in that,they both reflect a deep potential for encounteringtranspersonal states of consciousness. It is thereforepertinent to consider that the integration of spiritualemergencies in a collective context can be furthered byexploring the meaning, value, purpose, and function ofspirituality as intelligence.Whilst there appears to be no agreement for a universal

definition of spirituality it has been proposed thatinvestigations into spirituality as intelligence should beexploratory rather than definitive (Vaughan 2002). Thefollowing four propositions have provided a foundation forconsidering spirituality as intelligence (Emmons 2000):

� The capacity for transcendence.� The ability to enter into heightened spiritual states ofconsciousness.

� The ability to invest everyday activities, events, andrelationships with a sense of the sacred or divine.

� The ability to utilise spiritual resources to solveproblems in living.

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articles The four propositions outlined above (Emmons 2000) have

considered the various ways that spirituality requires someform of intelligent engagement to facilitate new patterns ofliving within daily life. However, the four propositions forspirituality as intelligence do not make any direct referenceto spiritual emergency, yet, it is evident that the problemsolving elements of engaging spirituality as intelligence haveresonances for addressing such transformational crises.Spirituality as intelligence offers a way of reflecting on ourcapacities to engage more deeply within everyday life,thereby enabling people to question the nature of reality andwhat it means to be human (Grof 2000). Thus, spirituality asintelligence has great significance for engaging people’spsycho-spiritual development and transformation (Grof,2000).Transpersonal states of consciousness can confront

people with an expanded view of self, other, and world(Vaughan 2002) which can pose challenging questions suchas Who am I? (Collins 2001). Thus, the collective integrationof transpersonal experiences within modern societies willrequire greater recognition for how transformational crisesare linked to transformations in consciousness. Deepreflection is an essential starting point for an intelligentunderstanding of what spiritual emergencies could mean tocollective consciousness, especially in the context of an evergrowing global and spiritual crisis.

ConclusionSpiritual emergencies are threshold experiences in humanconsciousness that require intelligent integration into dailylife. These transpersonal encounters have the potential tolead individuals and societies to discover new ways of doing,knowing, being and belonging in the world. However, humanbeings need to reflect upon the mainstream attitudes thathave pushed spiritual emergencies to the margins ofcollective consciousness. The ability to tackle the global andspiritual states of emergency in the modern world will requirehuman beings to integrate transpersonal consciousnesswithin daily life. This process of change could begin withpeople reflecting on the tensions that are experiencedbetween spirituality as a crisis, and engaging spirituality asintelligence.

ReferencesBleakley, Alan (2000) ‘Writing with invisible ink: Narrative,confessionalism and reflective practice.’ ReflectivePractice, 1(1), pp.11-4.

Bolton, Gillie (2006) ‘Narrative writing: Reflective enquiryinto professional practice.’ Educational Action Research,14(2), pp.203-18.

Collins, Mick (1998) ‘Occupational therapy and spirituality:Reflecting on quality of experience in therapeuticinterventions.’ British Journal of Occupational Therapy,61(6), pp.280-84.

Collins, Mick (2001) ‘Who is occupied? Consciousness,self-awareness and the process of human adaptation.’Journal of Occupational Science, 8(1), PP.25-32.

Collins, Mick (2007a) ‘Spiritual emergency andoccupational identity: A transpersonal perspective.’British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 70(12),pp.504-12.

Collins, Mick (2007b) ‘Engaging self-actualisation throughoccupational intelligence.’ Journal of OccupationalScience, 14(2), pp.92-9.

Collins, Mick (2008a) ‘Spiritual emergency: Transpersonal,personal, and political dimensions.’ Psychotherapy andPolitics International, 6(1), pp.3-16.

Collins, Mick (2008b) ‘Politics and the numinous: Evolution,spiritual emergency, and the re-emergence oftranspersonal consciousness.’ Psychotherapy and PoliticsInternational, 16(3), pp.198-211.

Elam, Jennifer (2005) Mystical experience as a way ofknowing. In C, Clarke (Ed.), Ways of Knowing: Scienceand mysticism today, pp.51-66, Imprint Academic, Exeter.

Emmons, Robert (2000) ‘Spirituality and intelligence:Problems and prospects.’ International Journal for thePsychology of Religion, 10(1), pp.57-64.

Grof, Stanislav., and Grof, Christina (1989) (Ed’s.), SpiritualEmergency: when personal transformation becomes acrisis, Jeremy P Tarcher, Los Angeles.

Grof, Stanislav (2000) Psychology of the Future: Lessonsfrom modern consciousness research, State University ofNew York, Albany, NY.

Glenn, Jerome., Gordon, Theodore., and Florescu, Elizabeth(2008) State of the Future: Executive summary. WorldFederation of United Nations Associations. RetrievedAugust 1, 2008, from www.millennium-project.org/millennium/issues.html.

Laszlo, Ervin,. Grof, Stanislav,. and Russell, Peter (2003)The Consciousness Revolution, Elf Rock Productions,London.

Laszlo, Ervin (2009) Worldshift 2012: Making greenbusiness, new politics & higher consciousness worktogether, Inner Traditions, Rochester, VER.

Lukoff, David., Lu, Francis., and Turner, Robert (1996)Diagnosis: a transpersonal clinical approach to religiousand spiritual problems. In B, Scotton., A, Chinen., J,Battista, (Ed’s.), Textbook of transpersonal psychiatry andpsychology, pp 231-49, Basic Books, New York.

Palmer, Genie., and Braud, William (2002) ‘Exceptionalhuman experiences, disclosure, and a more inclusiveview of physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being.’Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 34(1), pp.29-61.

Pillow, Wanda (2003) ‘Confession, catharsis, or cure?Rethinking the uses of reflexivity as methodologicalpower in qualitative research.’ Qualitative Studies inEducation, 16(2), pp.175-96.

Russell, Peter (2009) Waking up in Time: Our evolution andthe meaning of now, Origin Press, San Rafael, CA.

Thorne, Brian (2007) Spiritual intelligence and the personcentred therapist. In J. Baxter (Ed.), Wounds that Heal:Theology, imagination and health, pp.215-228, SPCK,London.

Vaughan, Frances (2002) ‘What is spiritual intelligence?’Journal of Humanistic Psychology,42(2), pp.16-33.

White, Rhea (1993) ‘Exceptional human experiences asvehicles of grace: parapsychology, faith, and the outliermentality.’ The Academy of Religion and PsychicalResearch: Annual Conference Proceedings, pp.46-55.

Wilber, Ken (2005) A Sociable God: Toward a newunderstanding of religion, Shambhala, Boston.

Wright, Stephen (1998) The reflective journey begins aspiritual journey. In Johns, C., and Freshwater, D, (Eds.),Transforming Nursing through Reflective Practice, pp 185-93, Blackwell Science, Oxford.

Zohar, Danah., and Marshall, Ian (2000) Spiritual Intelligence:The ultimate intelligence, Bloomsbury, London.

Mick Collins is a lecturer in the Faculty of Health, University ofEast Anglia, UK. His special interests are the transpersonal

dimension of human occupations and the transformative value ofspiritual emergencies within collective consciousness.

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was hanging near the foot of my bed, waiting for me to get upand start the day. My situation overwhelmed me. Eventuallyat my mother’s behest I managed to drag myself out of bed.The second type of fatigue in my childhood was less

dramatic but more pervasive. My parents kept us kids busywith many extra-mural activities, and on one particularSaturday morning we had to attend a swimming gala. Thesense of fatigue hit me hard, and suddenly I felt deeplyannoyed that I had to do this on a Saturday. It was supposedto be my day of rest. Not having any conscious knowledge atthat stage about the importance of the Jewish Shabbat, onceagain I found myself very badly at odds with my family, myentire little community and even myself. From then on myinexplicable resentment about Saturdays increased andchipped away at my sanity.I still could not talk to anyone and by now was so alienated

from the source of my distress that I could not have done soeven had the opportunity arisen. In high school, myexhaustion and depression became more profound each yearuntil I had a total nervous breakdown at the age ofseventeen.

Self-imposed SilenceME/CFS is not well understood by modern medicine. Manyexperts concur that it has two main components: virus andstress. I had viral problems since birth. My mother recordedeach episode in a scrapbook which she kept of my earlyyears, and the doctors were entirely unable to help me.Severe life stress played a major role in the development ofmy later illness. But even in childhood I had more stress thanI might have, simply because of not being able to tell anyoneabout my past life.Even if I had been able to talk to my parents about what

was troubling me, the problem would not have gone away.The burden would merely have been shifted to my parents. Irealised this recently when speaking with a mother whosechild also had Holocaust memories. The child had goodsupport from her mother, despite the mother’s initialincredulity and shock. The child probably did grow upemotionally more intact than I. But the mother came under

IntroductionI have a condition known as ME/CFS1, which leaves thesufferer so fatigued as to be literally crippled at times.I also have past-life memories and have had these since myearliest childhood. Their nature is very traumatic, being fromthe Holocaust. As a young child I was confused by trying tosort out what was ‘real’ versus what was inside my head. Icould not talk to any adult about my past-life memories andthis was deeply problematic. By the time I was seventeen Ihad gone from being a straight As gifted child to anunderachieving, suicidal wreck. After two overdoses, I washospitalised for depression. And so began my perilousjourney with psychotherapy.

Childhood Recall of a Past LifeRecently I have been reflecting on the very first instance ofextreme fatigue which I had in childhood. I was perhaps five,and had already been dealing with flashbacks of bomberplanes and air raid sirens, plus memories of torture. I wasnot yet at primary school but was already quite insomniacand was a shy child. Yet I was generally quite happy, and feltloved by my parents. I most definitely was not sexually orphysically abused.I was fending off the memory of the gas chamber. At night,

as I started to fall asleep, this terrifying but invisible thingwould sneak around the edges of my mind and startle meawake. This went on for what seemed a long time; it couldhave been a few months or more than a year. One night,feeling that I could no longer avoid it, I let the memory floodback in all its horror. The sound of screaming reverberatedinside me for what seemed like forever.I fell asleep eventually, and the next morning I awoke with

a crystal clear awareness. I knew I had been an adult andhad died in the gas chamber. I knew I had lost my family andthat I was now living with a family of strangers – who not onlydid not know who I was, but would not believe me if I toldthem. It was then that I first experienced crippling fatigue. Itdid not stem purely from the trauma of the memory itself; avery big factor was the realisation that I could not talk toanyone. I lay in bed staring at the pretty little dress which

Sue Randall

The Origins of my Fatigue

As a very young child I had past-life memories of a deeply traumatic nature, but Icould not talk to any adult about these. In this article I discuss the reasons for my self-imposed silence and its impact on my development. By adolescence I was sufferingfrom severe depression and identity confusion, and was treated by conventionalpsychologists; I also began to study psychology. Western psychology could not addressthe real issues behind my distress and I went on to develop a severe illness. Eventually,prompted by exposure to Buddhism, I began to confront my past-life memories forwhat they were, and began to heal. One of my main concerns today is thatundergraduate psychology students are still not being taught about CORT—cases ofthe reincarnation type. This gap in the curriculum can lead to iatrogenesis, as in myown case, where therapy may do more harm than good.

fire from several people close to her, who accused her ofbrainwashing her infant daughter about the Holocaust!Somewhere along the line, people will express their disbeliefand hostility about reincarnation.So either the child is going to suffer and become a misfit

within the family, as I did; or the parents, if they are able tosupport their child emotionally, will similarly risk becomingmisfits in the wider society. It may depend partly on thefamily’s educational and religious background. One of myJewish friends also had Holocaust past-life memories inchildhood. Her mother, being both Jewish and interested inspiritualism, was well-placed to help her daughter whilereceiving her own support from friends.But my parents are secular and agnostic, non-Jewish, and

of the rationalist-humanist school. They are academics andteachers; my father was a university professor and anti-apartheid publisher. Today – because I am ‘out of the closet’about my past life – it is almost impossible for them tobelieve that their daughter has a Jewish soul, which made itsway into their family and arrived deeply traumatised evenbefore birth. My academically oriented sister has added herown utter disbelief into the mix. My rabbi, who has handledmy conversion to Judaism over the past two years, is aReform Jew and thus is also very rationalist and humanist.He refers to the whole business as my ‘internal dialogue’.

HealingFor almost twenty years I could not accept the past-lifeinterpretation myself. I accepted the idea that whateverdifficulties I was having were psychiatric rather than spiritualin nature, and were caused purely by dysfunction in thecurrent lifetime. That is what modern Western psychologysays. The soul, in psychology, does not really exist. It’s allabout brains and social conditioning, and these things aresupposed to disappear when the body dies. It’s notsupposed to come back into another lifetime, asking to behealed.I was in therapy and I was also studying psychology. I was

steeped in that worldview. It took twenty-odd years for me torealise that psychology was taking me nowhere. My life hadfallen apart and I had become seriously ill. My body’ssymptoms matched the repressed past-life traumas exactly,down to the small congenital defect that now required urgentsurgical correction. It was cellular memory on an awful scale.But no amount of Western psychology was going to help me.Because of my poor health, I ended up living at a Buddhist

retreat for six years, where exposure to beliefs about rebirthseeped into my consciousness and finally began my healingprocess. But even amongst Western Buddhists there is a lotof scepticism about reincarnation, which becomes outrightcynicism and hostility at times.In recent years I have linked up with many people with

Holocaust past-life memories. There is an extraordinary highlevel of health problems among us, including severeconditions like cancer and depression, plus ME/CFS and its

cousin fibromyalgia. For all of us, healing is inextricablybound up with coming to terms with our memories. Most ofus could not talk about it as children. I suspect that thosewho did are not out there looking for support groups asadults.

The Academic ChallengeWe have a major problem here. Highly academic researchhas been done by Drs Jim Tucker and the late Ian Stevensoninto cases of the reincarnation type (CORT). Reading thesebooks was a turning point in my own life and this research iswidely recognised by many therapists and transpersonalpsychologists. However, it is not being taught in mainstreampsychology classes. The next generation of psychologists isbeing raised without any appreciation of the differencebetween, for example, dissociative identity disorderstemming from childhood abuse versus the shaky sense ofidentity which results from having vivid memories of being‘someone else’ in a previous life, whilst also being fullyaware of who one is today.If therapists, teachers, ministers and rabbis, doctors and

psychiatrists are not educated about CORT, how will ordinaryparents ever recognise and accept a child who is dealing withthis? The case studies show that CORT often involvestraumatic memory (such as the Holocaust, though of coursemany cases involve different trauma). We are talking aboutvulnerable children, children with special needs and specialabilities, children who need the help of adults around themto develop normal emotions and identities. The academicworld has a responsibility towards these children—and theadults they become. They cannot just be ignored in the hopethat they will all go away and kill themselves.Enough research has been done to show that CORT is a

genuine, if rare, phenomenon. It needs further study and maycall for a new diagnostic category. CORT should be includedin the core syllabus for psychologists, even though we do notyet have a satisfactory theory about how exactly it works. Youdon’t have to know the exact formula for gravitational forcesto acknowledge that an apple falls downwards from the tree.This is the same. We have to start somewhere. Once theacademic world accepts the existence of CORT and the factthat such cases show a fairly predictable pattern, we canfocus on developing a more coherent theory.

Sue Randall was awarded an MA degree in research psychologyby the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa) in 2006.Her three degrees were all gained cum laude. She has a love ofnarrative therapy and a flair for quantitative research. Sue isknown amongst family and friends for her ‘healing hands’ andintuitive insights. She is also a professional freelance writer and

editor, and is busy writing the story of her past life.

22 Network Review Summer 2010articles

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In a different frame of reference, Parkinson makes similarpoints in his discussion. He crisply writes that, on the pagesof the Review, the agenda has been set by Richard Dawkinsand the debate on evolutionary biology has been hijacked byDawkins and the like.I fully agree. Instead of dancing around Dawkins with fear,

we should laugh at him, and his ridiculous unscientificlanguage, and his metaphors such as ‘the blind watchmaker’or ‘the selfish gene.’ This is a laughable stuff. The bulk ofhis language is based on bullying, dogmas and intimidations.If the money boys, including journalists, like this language,(we must be quite clear why), it is their problem, not ours. Insubstance, Richard Dawkins contributed precious little to theunderstanding of dynamic evolution of life, and human lifeespecially. His legacy is a bunch of dogmas, not the opusleading to understanding.I also agree with Parkinson that our search for new

worldviews has been too dominated by cosmologists ‘whoresolutely refuse to go back beyond the first pico-moments ofcosmic evolution.’ Put it more plainly, the adventures of theNew Cosmology and New Physics combined are fascinatingintellectual pirouettes but serving mainly the practitioners ofthe craft. The complete understanding of the universe is asfar away from us as it was 50 years ago, perhaps evenfurther because of the tortuous complexity of explanations.The theory of everything sounds good as an idea —although it has always contained an element of a joke in it.The claim that the map of understanding of the universe(through physics) is nearly completed is another joke, whilewe don’t understand 95% of the composition of the universe.To suggest that physicists in 100 years and even in 1,000years will have nothing to do but to recite our presenttheories is another absurdity for me. In my intuition, I justknow that the whole physics (and its underlying cosmology)will be revamped sooner than we think. How soon? I will nottell you.

The Need for an Evolutionary DimensionWell, as a philosopher and epistemologist I wish to touchupon one basic flaw of present physical theories with theirproliferation of dimensions and particles. This wholeknowledge is flat, atomistic and dead. There is no evolutionin it. We only have photographic pictures of the frozen world.The genius of the world and the genius of life lies preciselyin the fact that it has evolved and is evolving. The dimensionof evolution is missing in all of physics. Genuine knowledgeis one which gives us the key to evolution of all there is. To

John Clarke’s challenge that we, as the whole Network,must raise the ante (N.R., Winter 2009) was quite timely.And Frank Parkinson’s response (N.R., Spring 2010) wasincisive, far reaching and truly challenging us all. Whichmeans we must respond to the challenge, individually and insome way as a group.The Network has existed for nearly 40 years. It has made

its history already. Its achievements are unquestioned andlasting. We could dissolve the Network and terminate theReview with a huge party of several hundred and — amidstcelebration — declare that we have done our best. It isperfectly all right to end a good thing with a bang.Now, if we want to continue the Network (and the Review)

we must ascend to a new level of vision and imagination. Wemust recharge the Network as a new thing, as an entity withan altogether new life. To dissolve the Network, whether witha party or without it, would be no shame. But we should notcontinue by sliding into oblivion — because of ourdiminishing capacities to marshal new visions, which, likediamonds, would be able to cut existing gargantuanproblems to reveal altogether new solutions.

Dancing to the Rhythm of Traditional ScienceTurning to substantial points, for all its novelty, originality andindependence, the Network, as a whole, has ceded far toomuch to the (traditional) scientific worldview — itsframework, its language, its forms of thinking. Hence, ouralternatives are merely footnotes to what is accepted by themainstream science. Yes, yes, yes, we cry for newworldviews, new cosmology, new consciousness, and yet ourmain dance is very much to the tune and rhythm oftraditional science. We are so afraid of being called ‘anti-scientific quacks’ that we bend backward by the merepossibility that we might be lashed by the whips of science.At the same time we are not fully aware that scientists areso often anti-scientific themselves, while disregarding thenoble quest of science for truth and allying themselves withmanipulative technology and parasitic commerce — for thesake of profit.Let me make one of my main points. In so far as

technology and science combined are the main culprits inundermining the foundations of sustainable worldviews andsustainable values (therefore sustainable life styles) ourallegiance to this or that version of the scientific worldview isonly exacerbating the situation…amidst our gentle pleadingthat ‘we want to help.’ The raging elephant has to becontained and not merely slightly restricted.

Henryk Skolimowski

The Evolutionary Futureof the Network

Henryk Skolimowski responds to recent articles in the Review by arguing that theNetwork needs to free itself from the shackles of restrictive science and adopt aradically evolutionary perspective – Evolutionary Transcendence.

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articles know is to understand how things evolved. The peculiar

genius of understanding is to know where we are and who weare against all the panorama of evolution. Heaps of facts andtheories of these facts — isolated from the flow of evolution— do not give us undersanding, in spite of the fact thatthese theories may be dressed in mathematical equations.Living knowledge is our quest, our aspiration and our

fulfilment. Physical knowledge is dead and for this reason itleaves us cold. We need knowledge that sings, that inspiresus to poetry, to art, joy and love. We need knowledge forhuman beings and not for abstract mathematical gods.Some of the greatest scientists of our times understoodthat. Among them there were Ilya Prigogine, John ArchibaldWheeler and Roger Penrose. They promised us a NewScience which would contain and explain history, poetry andlove. Yet their promises came to naught. When they finallyexpressed their major opuses, it was through moreequations and more dimensions, as if deriding us — humanbeings — in our quest of understanding.Let me emphasise that New Knowledge, by which I mean

living knowledge, will have to be the one which will combineNew Cosmology with the understanding of the humancondition, as lived by authentic human beings. It will alsohave to be the knowledge which will enable us to to resolveour gargantuan problems. Our best (physical) knowledge ismute about our most important problems and ouraspirations. For this reason it is defective for our ends andpurposes.

Freeing Ourselves from Scientific ShacklesThe following suggestions seem to follow from my discourse.Scientific models and modes of thinking have a greatgravitational pull. Once we are in their orbit, they suck us inand make us appendages of their imperatives. We have tofree ourselves from the tyranny of scientific thinking and itsominous shadow, which always nags us to check whetherwhat we think agrees with the scientific ethos. We need todevelop alternative world views outside the scientificterritory. Knowledge is more ancient and more importantthan science.Thus we have to create a new fertile cosmology (or

cosmologies), evolutionary in character, which would becapable of generating not only galaxies and the star dust, butalso biological life, and yes — human art, human values,

love, spirituality and gods... all in the same structure ofcomprehension. This overall structure of comprehension willbe the one which will enable us to solve our gargantuanproblems, which are the result of our incomprehension —yes, partly caused by our scientific dystopias.

A New Direction for the NetworkIn brief, this is the direction in which I would like theNetwork to follow: to invent, build and implement trulyalternative models of reality, starting with cosmologybecause without it, we are stuck in the old grooves. For thisreason I would rename the Review to read: Review ofEvolutionary Transcendence. The title itself suggests thedirection and breadth; and releases us from the shackles ofscience and medicine. As I have mantained, in its presentformat, the Network has fulfilled its intended purpose andeven achieved some fame. But we are now in a newevolutionary space.The question is: where do we find these new models of

reality which would enable us to achieve metanoia — ofturning things inside out. Aye, here is the rub. But notinsurmountable. These models are around us. Yet we needto look harder to find them.I will bring to your attention one of them — in the most

concise manner possible. Henryk Skolimowski has proposedsuch a model in his book: Let There be Light, TheMysterious Journey of Cosmic Creativity. (Wisdom TreeBooks, Delhi, 2010). David Lorimer has written anilluminating review of it in the Spring Review.The book spells out a new cosmology, based on the

primacy of Light — as the source of it all, as the creator of itall and the maintainer of it all. This cosmoslogy explains theworld in which everything is as natural as Light itself. Butalso as miraculous as Light itself, according to Einstein’sdictum: for a man who believes in miracles everything ismiraculous. The whole discourse is coherent and rational. Itassumes that Transcendence and Evolution are attributesbuilt into the structure of Light evolving. Through them Lighthas been able to create life and thought, art and gods. Allis simply and believably explained. If you think that it is notpossible to contain the whole cosmos in one book, read thebook. If you are dissatisfied with the book, write your own.Such is the imperative of creative Light. Be that Light —create!

Network Review Summer 2010 25

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should be expanded to include feeling, intuition, a sense ofself, and our drive to understand who we are.The practical application of consciousness seems remote

compared to technology. Would you rather be enlightened orown an iPad? In modern society, the choice is all too obvious.But it’s a false choice, because people don’t realise that thethings they most cherish and desire are born inconsciousness: love, happiness, freedom from fear, theabsence of depression, and a vision of the future. We achieveall these things when consciousness is healthy, open, alert,and expansive. We lose them when consciousness iscramped, constricted, confused, and detached from its source.I receive Google alerts every day telling me that one

sceptic or another calls these considerations ‘woo.’ It’s notmy role to defeat skepticism, which amounts in practice to aconspiracy for the suppression of curiosity. Scienceadvances through data and experiments, but those in turndepend upon theory. Theory is the flashlight that tells anexperimenter where to look, and without it, he wanders atrandom. His data don’t fit into a worldview. I consider myselfscientific at heart, and so I depend upon a theory as well. Itsbasic premises are as follows:

� We live in a universe that exhibits intelligence, self-regulation, and creativity.

� Consciousness preceded the brain. It created life andwent on to create the brain itself.

� Consciousness is primary in the world; matter issecondary

� Evolution is conscious and therefore creative. It isn’trandom.

� At the source of creation one finds a field of pureawareness.

� Pure awareness is the source of every manifest qualityin the universe.

I am not drawn to lost causes, and therefore I’d like toguide the debate away from religion. And since religion isthe primary form of spirituality in most people’s lives, we’llhave to step away from spirituality, too, at least at first. Thereshould be renewed admiration for science’s attempts toanswer the fundamental mysteries. These are well known bynow:

� How did the universe come about?� What caused life to emerge from a soup of inorganicchemicals?

� Can evolution explain all of human development?� What are the basic forces in Nature?� How does the brain produce intelligence?� What place do human beings occupy in the cosmos?

Many observers have linked these questions to spirituality,too. Facts tell us how life came about, but faith still wants toknow why. But what strikes me is how useless these bigquestions easily become. You and I live our lives withoutasking them. We may be philosophically curious; we mayeven have enough leisure time to reflect upon the big picture.For all that, the big questions are posed, by and large, byprofessors who are paid to pose them. Religion and scienceoccupy different kinds of ivory towers, but until they comedown to earth, neither one meets the practical needs of life.Science comes down to earth as technology, religion

comes down to earth as comfort. But viewed together, theyfall short of a common factor that guides every moment ofdaily life: consciousness. The future of spirituality willconverge with the future of science when we actually knowhow and why we think, what makes us alive to the outer andinner worlds, and how we came to be so rich in creativity.Being alive is inconceivable without being conscious. ‘I think,therefore I am’ is fundamentally true, but Descartes’ maxim

Deepak Chopra

Consciousness and the Endof the War between Scienceand Religion

Nothing gets as vicious as fighting for a lost cause. If the proverbial Martian landedin a flying saucer today and saw how religionists war against scientists, he would besurprised at the vehemence on both sides. What is the war about? Fact beat out faithlong ago. When Darwin’s theory of evolution replaced Genesis to explain theappearance of human beings, which was in the middle of the 19th century, the trendaway from faith was already old. The world had been remade as material, governedby natural laws, random in its effects, and immune to divine intervention. Not justscience but thousands of unanswered prayers did their part to dethrone God.

26 Network Review Summer 2010articles Scientists don’t use most of the terms that are central to

my theory — which isn’t mine, actually, but was born andsustained through the world’s wisdom traditions. In the nameof objectivity, science leaves consciousness out of itsequations and is fiercely proud for doing so. In doing that, ascientist is pretending not to be part of life, as if thinking,feeling, creating, loving, and enmeshing oneself in thecomplexities of the inner world were all irrelevant.In fact, nothing could be more relevant. While the general

public sees atheists mounting windy charges againstsuperstitious believers, neither side is moving forward. Thefuture lies with anyone who seriously delves into consciousness.Why? Because with physics arriving at the quantum world,neuroscience at the most minuscule operations of brain cells,and biology at the finest fabrics of DNA, all three have hit a wall.At the finest level, Nature is too complex to unravel through suchweak ideas as randomness, materialism, and unconsciousmechanics. Nature behaves, and as we know from ourselves,behavior is tricky. Science has tons of data about phenomenathat don’t fit any explanation. For example:

� How does an observer cause light to change fromacting like a wave to acting like a particle?

� How can a group of ordinary people cause a randomnumber generator to turn out more ones than zerossimply by wanting it to?

� How do millions of monarch butterflies migrate to thesame mountainous regions of Mexico when they’venever been there before and were not born there?

� How do twins connect at a distance, so that one knowsimmediately when the other has been hurt or dies?

� Where in the brain does the self live? Why do I feel likemyself and no one else?

These are alluring mysteries, like trailing bits of yarn thatlead back to a big tangled ball. This forum, with its open-minded questioning, can help in the untangling. Yet it spellsdoom if anyone, either believer or skeptic, falls back upon thetired and dishonest ploys that fill the debate today, such as:

� Already know the answer in advance, which makes youautomatically wrong.

� Disdain your beliefs.� You’re a fraud with dishonest motives.� I only want to make you look bad.� You don’t know as much science as I do, or perhapsnot at all.

� Speculative thinking is foolish, superstitious, or both.� I’m here to win, not to find out the truth.

Starburst Cluster Shows Celestial Fireworks (NASA / ESA / and the Hubble Heritage Team)

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Mystics and Scientists Conference,Winchester 16-18 April, 2010

‘In the beginning the heavens and earth rose out ofchaos’ (Milton)‘Only if you have chaos in you can you give birth to adancing star’ (Nietzsche)

The question how the order of the heavens and earth roseout of chaos has long been a central philosophical andtheological problem in the West. Does chaos arise from apreceding order, or is chaos in some way empoweredspontaneously to produce order? In the philosophy of Plato,and in the Christian tradition that was deeply influenced byit, the former opinion has prevailed: ultimately nature isexplicable in terms of a higher form of order, and the chaoswe experience in the world is an unfortunate lapse from thatoriginal pristine condition. When the Book of Ecclesiastespronounced that ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ it waslaying down the long-enduring principle that only God creates.In the past few decades there has been something of a

revolution in this way of thinking. The creative potential ofchaos has been intimated in a strand of Western counter-cultural thought that goes back via Nietzsche to theRomantics, but it has more recently emerged into prominencefrom a number of quarters beyond philosophy and theology. Ithas emerged from chaos theory itself of course, but also froma whole range of scientific and other developments whichhave drawn attention to self-organising systems that areevident at all levels of reality, from living organisms and socialsystems to the emergence of particles, galaxies and of thecosmos itself. An important breakthrough came with theintroduction by Maturana and Varela of the concept ofautopoiesis – self-making – to capture the way in whichcomplex systems do not simply maintain stasis in the face ofexternal conditions but dynamically recreate themselves.Is a new paradigm emerging? The physicist Paul Davies

pondered this in his remark that in this regard science ‘ispoised for a dramatic paradigm shift’, and the biologist BrianGoodwin has drawn attention to “The shift of focus in thenew biology that is developing our of the sciences ofcomplexity [which] has its focus on the origins of emergentorder in complex dynamic systems”.A similar shift of emphasis is also evident in spheres

which on the face of it seem a long way from science. Thenew spirituality is a clear case in point. Many writers in thissphere have emphasized the need for a new approach tospiritual transformation which is premised, not on conformityto unchangeable, transcendent law but to the creative,transformative potential that is within us all. Some havetaken this further and see this spiritual autopoiesis as ameans whereby we can mirror the transformative potential ofthe cosmos itself.

The conference drew on many different sources ofinspiration in an attempt to illustrate and make sense of thisnew way of thinking. It was certainly appropriate that DavidLorimer opened the conference with music, with Bach’s greatToccata and Fugue in F Major which demonstrates with suchemotional and intellectual power how a few simple strands ofsound can be woven together and transformed into asublime rhythmic whole, a kind of creation which wisdomtraditions have often compared to the creation of order in thecosmos itself.In his talk, David drew attention to the ways in which an

increasing variety of thinkers over the past century, fromBergson and Whitehead to Prigogine and beyond, haveshifted the foundations of our thinking about nature fromclassical determinism and materialism towards one whichrecognizes the transformative and creative potential of boththe natural and the human world. This has meant a shiftaway from the comfort of certainty and absolute beliefs, andunderlines the need for toleration and the acceptance thatwe live in a world of change, plurality and uncertainty. It isbecoming ever clearer, not least in the field of economics,that we live in a world that is poised somewhere betweenabsolute order and absolute disorder, on the edge of chaos,which is the condition of both destruction and of creation.Much needs to be changed, not least our states of mind, inorder to cope with this emerging new world.With wonderful synchronistic irony, the conference nearly

lost two of its speakers because of the chaotic descent of

John Clarke

Order out of Chaos:Possibilities for Transformation

28 Network Review Summer 2010report

the volcanic dust-cloud onto our orderly plans. The nextspeaker, Stuart Kauffman, was as a consequence groundedin Finland, but through the technical wizardry of MartinRedfern and Claudia Nielsen we were able to retrieve orderfrom chaos and carry on by means of video recordings andtwo-way video links.Stuart, who is a leading theorist in the field of emergent

self-organising systems, made it clear from the start that weare engaged in a radical change of worldview, largelypropelled by new developments in the sciences, butextending well beyond science’s normal remit, even towardsa new meaning of ‘God’ and the ‘sacred’, indeed a newmeaning of ‘meaning’..The main thrust of his argument was directed towards

traditional reductionism and determinism of the kind that weassociate with the French cosmologist Pierre Laplace whofamously boasted that we were capable in principle ofprecisely predicting all future events in the cosmos, and evenretrodicting all past events. We need, Stuart argued, toreassess the basic premises that the world is governed byinexorable laws, and open our minds to the idea that thecosmos is essentially creative and hence radicallyunpredictable. He accepted that in many quartersreductionism is alive and well, and is doing service as theprevailing paradigm, but he pointed to many areas ofscientific thinking, especially in biology, where the sheercomplexity of factors makes reductive explanationseffectively, and even in principle, inapplicable.The spiritual implications of this are as profound as the

scientific, and lead, in his mind, to a reconsideration of thebasis of our values and our sense of meaning in the light ofa universe which is not only self-creative as a whole but alsoin its many natural and human dimensions. The ceaselesscreativity of the universe has implications, therefore, for thevalue we place on human actions and the human quest formeaning, and on the notion of the ‘sacred’ which needs tobe ‘reinvented’ and brought back home into the world ofnature.If Stuart propelled us from science to spirituality, the talk

by Brother David Steindl-Rast anchored us firmly in the

spiritual realm. For him the primary task is ‘How do we findour bearings?’ in a world of bewildering size, change andcomplexity. In the midst of all the noise that these conditionsbring, the first and most important need is for a silencebeyond words, a silence which has the power to speak to us,and which can transform us in ways which allow us to attuneourselves to the natural world, and puts us in touch withcreative potential of every moment. This is the silence of theBuddha’s ‘Flower Sermon’ which has the power to unitewhere words can divide. A further need is for a God who isnot ‘wholly other’, but of whom we are an intimate part. Anda third need is to learn the virtue of thanksgiving, forexample for the gifts of science and art which are ourpromise and potential of self-transformation.

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Dr Peter Fenwick, Dr Marie Angelo,Brother David Steindl-Rast,David Lorimer, Barnaby Brown.

Network Review Summer 2010 29report

The creative transformation of which Marie Angelo spokewas that of the symbolic world of alchemy. This sheelaborated in terms of three basic elements. The first was‘mythos’ which gave her the opportunity to talk of JamesHillman’s archetypal psychology with its emphasis on theimportance of image, fantasy and stories, taking us back tothe pre-scientific world of Neoplatonism. The second was‘cosmos’, the order of the world which arises from the chaosof primal darkness and which is the materia prima of allcreation. This gives rise to the third element, ‘transformativeorder’, which Marie elaborated in the context of hereducational initiative to enhance spiritual growth.The conference was drawn back into the transformative

order of music in the final session on Saturday whenBarnaby Brown invited us to participate in the creativeprocess of musical reconstruction of a partly lost Celtic andother ancient musical traditions. He showed how theimaginative recreation of rhythmic patters by means of a newmusical notation can bring order out of seeming chaos andcan at the same time induce altered states ofconsciousness.Simon Conway-Morris confronted us with the mind-

opening question ‘If evolution is predictable, what does thattell us about its deep structure?’ In his reflections on thisquestion Simon argued against the view, associated withStephen Jay Gould among others, that steady progress ofevolution is punctuated with unpredictable breaks and jumpswhich suggest that the possibility of the evolutionary processrepeating itself is vanishingly small. Simon argued thatrecent work on convergence showed that the broad trajectoryof evolution is predictable in that it demonstrates aremarkable isomorphism between parallel and unconnectedstrands. For example the camera eye which we haveinherited has evolved in broadly similar patterns along quitedistinct phylogenetic pathways. A similar kind of convergenceis evident in features such as warm-bloodedness, birdsongand social play, and as far as humans are concerned theargument shows that our supposedly special cognitivecapacities are deeply intertwined with the rest of the ‘tree oflife’.The final talk by Wolfgang Michalski drew us back to the

present, bringing us again to making use again oftechnology’s creative response to the volcanic eruption, andat the same time to the volcanic eruption of the currenteconomic crisis. He led us through a fascinating history of

economic crises in the modern world, showing how financialdebt crises have occurred from the 14th century onwards,caused by such factors as war and famine. Our current crisisis in a different category, being global in scope, with only twoprecedents in 1857 and 1929. What we have experiencedover the past two years is an unbridled speculative epidemic,especially in the housing market, the consequence ofirrational exuberance and risk-taking driven by easy creditand lax surveillance. Are we on the way to recovery?Wolfgang was not sanguine. A longer term deflationary crisiswas by no means impossible, and the continued poor stateof the major economies, largely due to the huge rise in publicdebt, pointed to the possibility of a new major crisis.Certainly a greater degree of public control of the bankingsystem was necessary, he argued.

The last laugh was on the Brits: ‘You lent Iceland a lot ofmoney’, Wolfgang quipped, ‘and they sent back a lot of dust’,which nicely sums up the irony of the situation. The rationalexpectations of economists were certainly confounded, andthe consequence of the crisis is that the world seems evenmore uncertain and unpredictable than before. It bringshome painfully to us that we live on the edge of chaos, acondition which might lead entropically to greater and morepainful disorder. Alternatively it might, like the dark night ofthe soul, lead us to deeper reflection on how we got into thissituation, and thence to the possibility of creativetransformation. In complexity jargon, this is the ‘tippingpoint’ which marks the moment of greatest danger andgreatest opportunity.

John Clarke is writing a book on emergence theory, tracing itsdevelopment and arguing for the importance of its wider

theoretical and spiritual implications.

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30 Network Review Summer 2010correspondence

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The superb 102 edition of the Network Reviewserependitiously brought together four articles which raisethe whole question of the direction of the SMN and indeedits future as a network. These are the articles by BernardCarr, Martin Lockley, Paul Gilbert, and Frank Parkinson.Frank is a wise and thoughtful person, but he also delights

in being a gadfly. He deliberately takes up extreme orunpopular positions in order to test our comfortable receivedopinions to destruction. In this case he has provoked me tothink more deeply about the future of the SMN. If Iunderstand him correctly, he argues that the SMN should betransformed from a network to an elite structured learningexperience, if the original intentions of the founders are to befulfilled. The situation is given by the mandalas in BernardCarr’s New Paradigm of Matter, Mind and Spirit. Materialreality stretches in magnitude by at least 60 powers of tenfrom the total material universe to the smallest fragment ofsub-atomic energy What he terms ‘psi’ is the centralmanifesting point from which this material reality and aparallel reality of spiritual and conscious experience bothmanifest. The problem then is how is this psi to beinvestigated so as to provide the unified description ofmatter, mind and spirit that Bernard seeks?Martin Lockley and Ryo Morimoto relativise all our

intellectual arguments about this and all other questions.Rational analysis is not the ultimate end point in the evolutionof human consciousness. A holistic intuitive insight willtranscend intellectual reason without contradicting it. Anyunderstanding of psi will obviously need the development ofsuch insight. How then is such insight to be obtained? Frankdespairs of any network achieving that. Instead he declaresthat what we need are innovative thinkers who have risenclear of any network. His examples of such thinkers areSocrates, Jesus, Martin Luther and Copernicus. In fact thesecases prove the exact opposite. Socrates was a member ofthe intense intellectual network of 5th century BC Athenswhere the politicians, artists, playwrights and philosophers allknew each other personally. We know from the NewTestament and the Dead Sea Scrolls that Jesus arose in atime of religious ferment where many preachers wereproclaiming the coming of the Messiah and the end of theworld. John the Baptist was only the most well known of them.Martin Luther was well aware of the writings of previousreformers such as Wycliffe and Huss, and the ferment of newthought typified by by Ficino and Erasmus. Copernicus isexactly the opposite example. He was a member of nonetwork, and his heliocentric system was ignored until it wasrevived by Galileo. The vertical surge of innovation arises fromthe horizontal platform of an active network.A structured learning program such as Frank suggests is

no answer. Apart from the pretensions of its curriculum andteachers being subject to all the withering criticism whichFrank himself could mount wearing his anti authoritarian hat,a separate movement would get nowhere. There have beenplenty of religious/spiritual movements in the 20th centuryfrom Opus Dei to the Maharishi which have given a thrill tosome of their members, but have been irrelevant in the

cultural evolution of their time. What is needed is a spiritualinsight which is nevertheless rooted and connected with thedominating and successful scientific knowledge of the 21stcentury. We need a network of people devoted to modernscience, and yet prepared to look beyond it. The SMN in fact.Nevertheless Frank Parkinson’s concerns remain. How can

the SMN become more focussed so as to provide the insightwhich Bernard Carr’s article demands? It is too often thoughtthat spiritual experience means something dramatic like thebeatific vision, or a blick of cosmic consciousness. Thebiographies of even great saints and mystics tell us thatthese are rare events even in the life of the most heroic ofspiritual athletes. Paul Gilbert’s article provides a meaningfulway out. The cultivation of self-awareness, mindfulness andcompassion is possible for all. Should the SMN thereforehave an additional rubric in its aims and disciplines? As wellas being committed to openness, rigour, and respect forothers, might we not also be asked to commit ourselves tothe inner disciplines of examined self-awareness and anawakened compassion for all life? Such a commitment istheologically and philosophically neutral. It presumes nometaphysical dogma about reality: yet it is inwardly selftransforming. A network based on these principles wouldhave a horizontal basis in science from spiritual insight couldarise. It is what the 21st century needs.

Frank Parkinson replies:You do a pretty good imitation of a gadfly yourself, if I maysay so, and while I would not reject that description ofmyself, I think I would prefer to be called a midwife, likeSocrates. I am, in fact, at present working on a methodologyto be used largely in tertiary education which, as aprinciple, structures teaching to create an external andinternal dialectic.Would this, or should this, be of interest to members,

bearing in mind that the SMN constitution commits us to theadvancement of learning and religion? That perhaps is ametaquestion which would not turn most members on.But to address your concerns more directly. Yes, I do

believe that the SMN should be an elite of some kind, forotherwise I cannot see much reason for its existence. Whatwould distinguish our meetings from pub talk, if we did nothave (a) something of more than common value to give toeach other, and (b) a willingness - nay, a hunger - to change.If I myself have something to offer it is probably that God

wired me back to front, so that I grow more curious in achildlike fashion as I get older. Alas, he did not give theenergy of the child, which is a constant source of amazementand delight as I watch it in action. My intellectual andimaginative batteries will take me no further than noon thesedays, but with my 82nd birthday approaching, and otherwisedecent health, I suppose I can’t complain. I know I shouldn’tcomplain, for that (pace Jesus) is the greatest sin, a doctrineI have learned from de Caussade and John Chapman and theSufi Rabia.

From: Max Payne, maxgpayne@gmail.com

A Defence of Networks

Network Review Summer 2010 31

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spondence

There is so much in your email which calls for comment. Ithink I am in agreement with Bernard Carr, and certainly withMartin Lockley and Ryo Morimoto, as regards what yousummarize as ‘the central manifesting point’, but see alatent contradiction between the psi point and Teilhard’sOmega point. From where I stand, what we need, and what Ihope the Network would work towards is a newunderstanding of this, and I believe we need a new story of‘in the beginning’ to replace the first line of Genesis andJohn’s gospel. Where science lets us down here, I wouldargue, is that the Big Bang point must logically have been agenuine point - i.e., of no dimensions, and accepting thisleads to a new Copernicanism, with all the denialism thatyou touch upon in your letter. I have often talked with Zitaabout this, but she has difficulty understanding what ismeant by three dimensions, let alone no-dimension orhyperspace.In the present context, let me put that in a very concrete

form. I am sure that every member of the SMN would agreethat we live in an expanding 3D cosmos - that is surely partof the ‘platform’ of which you speak - but how many can givean answer to the question: what is our cosmos expandinginto? Bernard Carr’s mandala seems to suggest fivedimensional space (not quite sure of that) but my wider pointis that such controversial questions in physical science arenow part of religion in a way that once they were not. You willhave known all the founders of the SMN, and so might guessas to their feelings if I were to suggest that the SMN shouldinitiate a structured response to such questions. I have onlytalked twice on the phone with George Blaker, shortly beforehis death, and spent most a day with Jennie later - a poignantbut enjoyable time in their family home - and feel that he, butnot she, would have wished to take this further. Jennieseemed to me more into environmental, rather than hardscientific, concerns.I agree with you that the ‘vertical surge of innovation arises

from the horizontal platform of an active network’, but insistthat this platform must be constructed, to create a universe

of discourse, without which we are all talking to ourselves, orshouting into the void. My point in the article was that the oldreligious and scientific universe within which constructivedialogue took place has gone. My conversations with GeorgeBlaker tended to circle round this point, and a plannedmeeting which, alas, did not take place, was largely toexplore the implications, as I recall. I know exactly what youare referring to when you cite Luther and Erasmus, but howmany members would totally miss your point for lack of thishistorical knowledge.We may not be so far apart as appears, for I think your

question as to how the SMN could become more focussed isnot very different from the one I have just raised, viz. whatbasic knowledge do we all need in order to make progress?If the SMN is not about progress and development, what is

its purpose?One important correction. I am not against networks - which

the word ‘defence’ in your title suggests - but I do feel stronglythat we need to decide whether the SMN is a permanent ortemporary network, for reasons I expand upon in my article,seeing a purpose beyond itself. Far from despairing of anynetwork achieving the transcendent insight for which theworld now hungers, I think a seeking network is the onlyseedbed in which such an insight could take root. If Socratesor Jesus or Newton had been left at birth in a jungle tribe, theywould have left no mark on the world. Again, a point youexpress in a somewhat different way.Slipping into gadfly mode - and restraining my eirenic

tendency - I would say that no one should be a member ifthey do not know (as you clearly do) that it was John theBaptist who was the key reformer in his time (which is whyJesus enlisted in his movement) and has thought about thehistorical significance of this fact. And another condition ofmembership should be that all should be familiar with JulianJaynes. (Do I hear a growling sound from across thePennines?)Thank you again, Max, for taking the trouble to write your

letter and let me see it.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION FORUM2010 DAY CONFERENCE

God, Humanityand the Cosmos:A ConversationSSeepptteemmbbeerr 44 22001100

The Queen’s Foundation, Somerset Road,Edgbaston, Birmingham10.30 am - 4.30 pm

� A chance to review the status of thedebate

� to discuss together the most excitingaspects of its future, and

� to inform the new edition of God,Humanity and the Cosmos ed.Christopher Southgate (T&T Clark,1999, 2005)

Meet the authors and makeyour views known.

Forum members £35 includingrefreshments and lunch.Non-members £50. Cheques should bemade out to ‘Science and Religion Forum’.

Enquiries and Registration:Please contact Dr Louise Hickman onl.hickman@newman.ac.uk or throughNewman University College, Genners

Lane, Bartley Green, Birmingham B32 3NT.

32 Network Review Summer 2010correspondence

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A response to Frank Parkinson’s article‘Aims and Structure of SMN’ published inthe Spring 2010 edition of the NetworkReview, with reference to the Manifesto forChange published in the 100th issue,Summer 2009.

I heartily support the views and aims for future developmentof the Network as expressed in the manifesto, and I find itironic that what has actually prompted me to write now isFrank Parkinson’s article on the ‘Aim and Structure of theSMN’, which I find myself very much less able to support,while appreciating it as a serious contribution to the debate.Perhaps this indicates that I /we - take far too much forgranted in relation to what the Network stands for, how itoperates, how much work is done in order to make thathappen, and the remarkable degree to which it lives up to theaims it espouses. For all that, may I say now, a profound andheartfelt ‘thank you.’I am moved to respond to Frank Parkinson’s article,

because it seems to me both the criticisms and proposalshe is making are seriously contrary to the stated, published,and valued ‘Aims of the Network’ which I consider remainentirely relevant, and the changes he is suggesting wouldseem to undermine the very nature, character and purposeof its existence. In essence, the difference between the two proposals

would seem to be between the inclusive both-and perceptionbehind all clauses of the Manifesto, and a reductive either-orapproach, for the sake of perceived unanimity and whatwould necessarily be superficial agreement. There are innumerable organisations that fulfil his demand

to share an accepted orthodoxy about the nature of non-material reality, have a common basis of knowledge andassumptions, and sing from the same hymn sheet. Themajority of SMN members doubtless also belong to some ofthose through their professional bodies and otherallegiances, as did the founders of SMN. It was preciselybecause of those constraints that the SMN was founded - toprovide a safe forum for the critical and open mindeddiscussion of ideas that go beyond those, and to be open toa plurality of viewpoints. Parkinson attributes motives to the founders which I have

to say sound to me rather more like projections thanreasonable assumptions. e.g.: the unstated premise that –religious truths must accept to some degree the standardsof truth to which science aspires, and science must becomeless materialistic. Isn’t the task much more about holdingthe tension creatively between the two, than trying to makeeach more like the other?Later he says: ‘I suspect the unconscious purpose (of the

founders), was to establish a new universe of discourse (asa substitute for an accepted Christian orthodoxy.)’ Did thefounders form the Network in order to find answers to whichthey all agreed, or to be safe and free to explore in depth aplurality of viewpoints, and discover what might evolve fromthat? Parkinson identifies the stated original aim of the founders

as being for ‘the advancement of learning and religion’,which he rightly describes as both an evolutionary and a

transformational process, and goes on to argue thatadvancement requires ‘a shared sense of direction, asopposed to a circular movement in danger of becoming anintellectual milling around.’ Rather than being one or the other, I suggest this process

is better described as proceeding in a spiralling rather thanlinear direction. In our own lives, we may recognise themesrecur, but seldom in exactly the same context or dimension.Sensitive awareness of that may often be enough to releaseus from circularity into the spiral involving more than onedimension, and with the potential to include meaning.I cannot agree with his statement that ‘a network by its

very openness is not fitted for the purpose of inspiration.’Inspiration arises from the response that is evoked, andultimately as human beings we are individually responsiblefor what we make of the big questions. Of course there isselection by the directors in the process of arrangingprogrammes which offer a rich resource to nourish us asemerging ‘Cultural Creatives’, (referred to in the manifestoarticle,) and feed the hunger for life-long learning. Networkdirectors relatively seldom try to tell members what ought toinspire them, and in my experience are least effective whenthey do. The precious prevailing culture which encouragesmembers to respond authentically from themselves is farmore persuasive and influential than if the Network were todegenerate into yet another pressure group. In terms of the proposal for a major further educational

project: there may well be a place in the world where thiswould make a valuable contribution, but I am not sure it lieswithin the SMN, largely because I can’t help feeling one ofthe intentions behind this proposal is that sooner or later,only those who had attended and graduated from therequired programme, signed up to the orthodox view, got thecredentials, and were singing from that particular hymnsheet, could be members of the SMN. That sounds a lotmore like indoctrination than education to me, and certainlynot in accord with the currently held aims and values of theNetwork.In all this, I am reminded of the old Hindu story about the

blind men exploring and communicating about the nature ofthe elephant, when each of them has only one bit of theelephant available to explore. No human being has, or everwill have, a complete view or knowledge about the wholenature of the elephant: Truth.

Parkinson asks what basis of commonality we haveas a network if we do not share ‘minimal agreement andcommon assumptions’ about the nature of non-materialreality? I would argue the commonality is not necessarilyderived from agreement about the answers but a passionateinterest and commitment to continue to be open to thequestions. We need to be able to tolerate paradox, ambiguityand different ways of knowing and to value a variety ofviewpoints on truth as part of the many dimensions of realityover and above an artificial desire for closure, in answersand certainty. Above all, a state of mind that does embracea both/and view of the world, rather than the more simplisticeither/or perception, which does not mean anything goes,but does imply never, nothing-but. I believe that attitude ismost likely to foster development of the movement in theworld towards cultural creativity, of which the Network is part.

From: Diana Williams, dianawilliams.chestnut@virgin.net

Network Review Summer 2010 33corre

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NETWORK NEWSAPPOINTMENT OF DIRECTORSAt the recent Annual Meeting, Dr. Amit Biswas, Gerri McManus and Prof. MarilynMonk were re-elected to the Board, and co-opted Member Claudia Nielsen waselected.

SMN BOOK – TOWARDS A NEW RENAISSANCE – Transforming Science, Spirit and SocietyThis new Network volume edited by David Lorimer and Olly Robinson has 25contributions in four sections: Worldviews in Transition, Consciousness and Mindin Science and Medicine, Spirituality and New Understandings of the Sacred, andGlobal and Local Transformation – Governance, Economics and Education. It will bepublished by Floris Books with a launch conference on November 6 at Queen MaryCollege – a leaflet is enclosed. Any submissions not selected will be posted on thewebsite at the time of the conference and a blog will be created to facilitateexchange and discussion.

SMN BOOK PRIZE, 2010The SMN Book Prize is awarded annually to the most significant book recentlypublished by a member (almost always in the same calendar year). All books byMembers received for review are automatically entered, so do make sure wereceive a copy! The 2010 winner will be announced towards the end of the yearand the recipient will be invited to give a talk in London just before Christmas(unless of course they live too far away!)

PROF. HENRYK SKOLIMOWSKI BECOMES ANHONORARY MEMBERThe Board decided to confer HonoraryMembership on Professor Henryk Skolimowskion the occasion of his 80th birthday, which wascelebrated at a conference in a Polish castle inMay and commemorated by a book, The Worldas Sanctuary, reviewed in this issue by MaxPayne. Henryk has been a pioneer in developingecophilosophy and has been a member for over30 years. He has played a vital role in thedevelopment of our New Renaissanceconferences and has an article in our new book. His comments below areexpanded in the Articles Section. Henryk commented: ‘I am delighted and honoured to be elected an Honorary

Member of the Network. And I accept this honour with pleasure. I thank you andthe Board for counting me among the great minds of the Network. I have been astaunch supporter of the Network for the last 35 years because it has been a greatinstitution shedding many rays of light on our present world. I hope to cooperatewith the Network in the years to come.As splendid as it has been, our work is not done yet. Indeed we shall require new

resources of Logos and Imagination to wrestle with our present monumentalproblems. I dare say, we shall need new, deeper and more far-reaching solutions.For at times, we have been too timid. I shall be ready to join you in thought andaction in our worthy projects, be it a New Renaissance or other far-reachingventures.

EW MEMBERS SINCE APRIL 2010Surname First Name LocationDavis Lorraine UKDaya Shamim UKDorjee Dusana UKDuffy Peter UKFairclough Richard UKGajadharsingh Gerry UKGillman Harvey N UKGittoes Alice UKGlouberman Zohar Dina UKHart-George Alice UK

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� use your membership numberwhenever you contact us, andwrite it onto all correspondence,conference booking slips,subscription forms, bankers orderforms and orders for books,services etc.

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� ensure cheques are made outcorrectly to Scientific & MedicalNetwork; for conferences andorders: always add (legibly!)details of what it’s for andmembership number on back,even when accompanied by abooking form

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� help us save money; wheneverpossible pay in £ sterling and usebankers orders and gift aid foryour subscriptions - it maximisesfunds available for moreimportant things

Office hours are 9am – 5pm Monday– Friday and there is normallysomeone to answer the telephonebetween those hours, with anansaphone otherwise.

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and Office Procedures

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Helland Robert USAHenson Laurence IrelandHunter Christine UKJohnson Chris UKKingston Andrea H UKLesino Carlos UruguayLindley-Jones Kerstin UKMale Phillipa UKMunthe Katriona ItalyOliver Lucy UKOuston Jo UKParish Chris UKPlesch Peter UKPollitt James Wallace UKRoth Simon C UKRudkin Alexandra UKRuffles Tom UKStinn Beatrice Anne CanadaTaylor Alan UKTaylor Alison UKTilford Maureen UKTrotta Patrizia ItalyTubridy Aine IrelandVassilopoulos Christos GreeceVooght Christine Elizabeth UKWalsh Anne UKWinder Meera UKWollerton Yvonne Norway

SMN AND MARKETING -what makes us special toyou? Let me know!

Gerri McManusDespite the recession, ourmembership has been veryslowly rising over the lastyear. Even so, the Networkis not financiallysustainable at the currentrate, even though most ofthe work is carried out byvery committed volunteers

on a limited budget. As a result, we need to increaseNetwork membership as well as number of participants atour events. But we also want the Network to grow becausewe value what it does.One problem in increasing our membership is that there are

many other organisations similar to the SMN, but they don’tdo quite the same as us. Also, our members tend to stay withus for a long time, so the average age of members isincreasing. We therefore need to attract more young people.Feedback indicates that new members and attendees

come to us because they were recommended to do so by afriend or someone they knew - essentially through socialnetworking. We have all seen the phenomenal rise of onlinesocial networking facilities, and if we are not already usingthem ourselves, we have friends and offspring who do.Perhaps we have even joined because of them.So the SMN is a social network, and we have been busy

networking for over thirty-five years. As such, we need to takeadvantage of the many opportunities these tools offer us toshare our ideas to raise awareness of the Network.With this in mind, over the last year the Trustees have

invested in a new website, and we have set up a newFacebook Group, ‘Cosmos and Consciousness’ and

established a new LinkedIn group. We are also currentlyconsidering other channels like Twitter and meet-up groups.We hope you value the SMN and want to continue to enjoy itin the future, so we are really counting on you to tell yourfriends, children and grandchildren, bring them along toevents and encourage them to look at the website, and findus elsewhere online.But we also want to understand better what it is about the

Network that you value and what you think makes us sospecial. Is it the opportunity to be with like-minded people orthe holistic integration of scientific, academic and spiritualvalues? What is unique about the conferences, talks andother meetings? What do you find in the Network Review thatyou cannot find in other journals? We want to know what it isthat you say to your friends and relatives when yourecommend us so that we can shape our marketingmessages and efforts accordingly. So with that in mind,please let me know what you think.I look forward to hearing from you.

Gerri McManusDomain of Marketing, Co-ordinator of SMN Guildford Groupgerri@power-hours.com 08456 136 5924

LOCAL GROUP NEWSSwedish GroupBO AHRENFELTBo Ahrenfelt writes: The Swedish group held the Spring

meeting in the beautiful village of Brantevik, Österlen, on theSouth coast of Sweden 21-22 May. As usual we started onFriday evening with dinner and informal talks. The formalmeeting began on Saturday morning. Inviter was GerthHyrkäs, who had done a marvelous job with the venue, not tomention the dinner from a local restaurant with its famouschef. Our next meeting will be in Sigtuna just outsideStockholm, at the Sigtunastiftelsen 24-25 September. Moredetails will be presented later. bo.ahrenfelt@iflw.com

Gerth Hyrkäs writes: The Swedish group held its springmeeting in Brantevik the 21st and 22nd of May. AntoonGeels, Professor of Psychology of Religion at the Universityof Lund gave a presentation of his experiences in Bhutan inSeptember 2009. In Bhutan, Buddhist monks and Shamansplay essential roles in the everyday life of the people. AntoonGeels showed ceremonies of both kinds. The purpose ofthese ceremonies is to ward off evil forces that can causetrouble like sickness and bad harvest and ensure aprosperous life. And judging by the pictures displayed, theculture of Bhutan is very beautiful and well kept, tidy andplaced in splendid natural surroundings. The authoritiesdemand a certain architectural style with white paintedstonewalls and a special wooden design around windowsand doors that strongly contributes to the aesthetic order.Their Buddhism can be divided into three kinds: the NibbanaBuddhism of the dzongs (monasteries and the state), theApotropaic Buddhism of the shamanism, and the KammaBuddhism of the lay people. The concern of the latter is togain merits in this life. Nibbana can wait and the good life inSamsara is the common purpose. Antoon Geels stressed theinterest of keeping this religious culture intact and comparedit to the development in Tibet which he labelled as a culturalrape. The young who enters the dzongs at the age of sevengo through an education that consists of different subjects -language, philosophy, astrology... Everything is learned byheart. The ceremonies monks and shamans perform for thegood of the people are rewarded with food, rise and money.

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In the temples protective deities, bodhisattvas likeManjushri and Avalokiteshvara, are approached much likethe saints of Catholicism. On many walls of Bhutan bigphallic symbols are painted in a very zestful way. It is an oldtradition that is said to go back to ‘The Divine Madman’ whoin the 16th century defied evil spirits with his penis. Theimages are said to have that protective force. Westerntourists, though, have been shocked by them. Their numbersare therefore decreasing nowadays.The meeting ended with a suggestion from Antoon Geels.

He expressed a wish to do something more with theknowledge of religion he has acquired through the years anduse it for social and cultural improvement. His idea was thatit must be possible to use the knowledge of spirituality forthe sake of humanity. The idea centred around concepts likepeace, compassion and the seeking of truth, satyagraha. Thedecision was made to let the autumn meeting of the Swedishgroup focus on this issue.

London Group CLAUDIA NIELSEN – 0207 431 1177 The talks below have been recorded and members can hearor download them from ‘Summaries of Previous Events’ ofthe London Group page of the Network’s website. In April we welcomed an old friend of the SMN, retired

Jungian analyst and author Anne Baring. In her colourfullyillustrated presentation entitled The Call of the Cosmos andthe Great Work of Alchemy, Anne explained how this art,which goes back to pre Christian times, seeks to respond tothe call of the Cosmos which we humans can feel from thedepth of our being. Her own interest was started by a dreamshe had when she was young, in which a voice was crying outfor help. Looking around she found the voice came from astone! There and then she understood that this was spiritburied in matter and that she was being called to work on herown understanding of this phenomenon, then to teach andwrite. Alchemy is this process which seeks to reveal a hiddenreality of the highest order and deals with fundamentalquestions such as who we are, what we are doing here andhow to manifest the spirit of life. The Great Work of Alchemyaims to help us develop our own consciousness and toreconnect with the invisible soul of the Cosmos. It is apowerful process and during the psychotic breakdown inwhich he was flooded by unconscious material, Jungexperienced it in full force and this enabled him tounderstand and then write about it. The reality described by Alchemy is very differently from the

dead universe of modern scientific materialism. The Cosmosis seen as living, organic, a sacred whole. This perspectivegoes back to the civilisations of the Bronze Age when all lifewas spirit and man was a part of it. This was the earlyfeminine, lunar era, the time of shamanic consciousness, inwhich man participated in the cosmos by living in a moreinstinctual way. This culture is symbolised by death andrebirth and its myths are connected with the life and deathof the earth, the regeneration of the seasons. Although wehave lost this lunar perspective in our rational mind, it stilllives in our instinctual soul. The masculine, solar era startsaround 2000 BC, with the beginning of writing. Then, aradical change of consciousness occurs, and the sunbecomes the great symbolic image. This is a phase ofseparation of the ego, the conscious mind from nature. This created a split between the emergence of the

conscious mind and the instincts. As a consequence, dualitycomes into being, and with it the split between good and evil.Lunar, the idea of oneness becomes lost and we start seeingGod as external to ourselves. The key image becomes

transcendence and the emphasis is on getting out of theworld, out of the wheel of rebirth, and into the world to come.The body has to be controlled and subjugated. The work ofalchemy is bringing luna (moon, the feminine) and sol (sun,masculine) back together towards a wholesome union. Thevessel of the alchemist is his own psyche – the primamateria - and our individual imagination is seen as the divineelement, an implant of the Cosmic Imagination. This, theAnima Mundi is the root and matrix of our personalconsciousness and the journey of the soul is to reconnectthe conscious mind with instincts. The process from nigredoto rubedo is complete when the body of light after death isreunited with Unus Mundus.In May we had Angela

Voss, who started life as aclassical musician thenmoved to the academicworld where she wrote herPhD on the music ofMarsilio Ficino. For the lastfour years Angela has beenthe director of the MAprogram on Cosmology andDivination at the Universityof Kent. She has a longstanding interest in the methods and interpretation ofknowledge that arises through magic and divinationpractices. Her presentation this evening was entitled TheFour Levels of Interpretation: from Science to Mysticismand examined different ways of knowing and levels ofinterpretation. Whereas today the consensus is thatempirical scientific method is the only arbiter of truth in allareas of life, Angela examined the multi-layered ways inwhich the world was interpreted in the past, and shown thatalthough not universally considered, they are still as relevanttoday as they were then. The ancient Greeks and early Christian Church understood

that particular perception is required and specific methodsapplied to different ways of knowing. A good example, are thefour levels of interpretation proposed by Origen of Alexandria(c. 185–254) for the understanding of sacred texts: the firstand most basic is the literal level which reports facts. The lifeof Christ in this mode is understood as purely historical. Thenext level is the allegorical, which introduces symbolicinterpretation, teasing out meaning behind the narrative. Inthis mode Christ’s journey is understood for its deepermetaphorical significance. The third level, the tropological,combines this understanding with action resulting in changesin the way life is lived. Christ’s example and teachingsbecome transformative as they are taken into one’s own life.The fourth level is the anagogic or mystical knowing andChrist becomes known internally as revelation, and theperson acquires spiritual insight into the nature of Reality. The major bridge is crossed from the first level – the literal,

to the second in which one thing is seen for another by theinterpretation of the symbolic. Symbol is important becauseit brings the divine level down to sense perception throughthe power of imagination. Ibn Arabi (1165-1240) offers asimplified version by conflating the last three steps. Hepoints to two ways of seeing the world which he called theeye of reason and the eye of revelation. Both are important,the eye of reason will facilitate scientific understanding andprogress and the eye of revelation keeps us connected withthe symbolic and spiritual reality. Arabi warned of thedangers of seeing the world in an imbalanced way for the eyeof reason divorced from the eye of revelation will lead to amaterialistic reductionist and superficial understanding

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disconnected from meaning and the eye of revelationdivorced from the eye of reason, will lead to transgressionsin the realms of the irrational. His views are eminently current as we consider the

imbalance caused by the emphasis placed on the eye ofreason which affords exclusive credibility to scientificexplanations in all areas of life. Angela, and the audience ingeneral agreed, that to be true to our human nature, ratherthan adopting a single perspective, we need to be aware ofthe validity of these multiple ways of knowing. In June, Christopher Titmuss, a former Buddhist monk,

author of numerous books and Dharma teacher gave his talkthe intriguing title What is Truth? He started by asking theaudience about their questions on the topic and proceededto answer them by exploring the language we use figuring theword truth. With great clarity and focus, Christopher led usstep by step to follow his thinking towards what turns out tobe quite a simple insight. He started by pointing out thepower of generalisations. Institutions, of which we aresurrounded, have voices of authority which reflect and mirrortheir ethos. It is quite common that we attribute authority tothese voices and accept what they say as truth. There isgreat danger in this! There is a difference between truth and a view and to avoid

falling into an unquestioning conformist position we mustremain vigilant about authority so we do not confuse viewand truth. Christopher pointed out that even in the legalsystem, a view is frequently confused with truth. Whenlooking closely we see that it is often about winning anargument, rather than teasing out the truth. In another area,that of conflict, the situation is even more entrenched: is itpossible to free up the concept of truth from the language,motivation plus the need from both sides to win theargument? This led him to consider the problem of conflictwhich arises from the mindset that perceives differences astruth. Yet, there is no truth there – only views. It is in thebelief (or view) of a gap between us and them, that the horrorof violence can take place Christopher pointed out. Herecalled the way his teacher in Thailand would start his talks,which went: dear brothers and sisters, in birth, ageingsickness and death! Birth, ageing, sickness and death, isthat which we have in common! From a dharma perspective(teachings on the way things are) – in the same way wechange, views also undergo changes. A view at one point in time will undoubtedly change and

this constant adaptation shows that what we take as truth atone point, will show up as not being so at a different stage.This goes for everything including science. So, authority mustbe questioned. Knowledge adapts and changes. So what oftruth? How can we know truth from knowledge? TruthChristopher says, has a function. Truth is that whichtransforms. Truth moves and shows itself with some kind ofbreak with the past. In this break, life opens up in some way.Truth is the transformative element in human existence.Different from knowledge and information, it is a shift andour own experience can confirm it. Sometimes it hits us fromthe outside – perhaps something someone says – othertimes it is an internal process. Art, music, theatre etc can wake us up – transform us –

that is truth! The understanding is transforming – notinforming! That is the difference. When it transforms, it istruth, when it does not – it is called a view! Truth when ittransforms does not necessarily take us somewherepleasant, sometimes the transformation is towardssomething painful! Nevertheless, every transformation bringswith it a new beginning! The audience was deeply touched,and following a short dialogue the room fell silent!

Yorkshire GroupMAX PAYNE – 01142 304194Meeting Saturday 6th March 2010 at Westernesse, 16 BurntStones Grove, Sheffield.Manjir Samanta Laughton gave a talk on ‘The GeniusCurve’. Genius is not a matter of IQ or genetic inheritance.It cannot be traced in terms of neural pathways in the brain.Genius comes from a supra personal level of consciousnesswhich is universal. The task therefore is how to open ourpersonal minds to this power which is above us. The energywill then use the personal instrument into which it descendsinto according to the limitations of that instrument.This power of human consciousness is just one aspect of a

total cosmic pattern. Recent research into ‘black holes’ hasrevealed many anomalies that do not fit into the standardversion of cosmology. They are not merely negative sinks whichswallow up all matter and light within their ‘event horizon’.Paradoxically they are also a source of positive energy. Manjirspeculated that the ‘event horizon’ applied only to the 5% ofenergy and matter we understand, and that black holes may beradiating in the 95% of dark matter and energy which we do notunderstand. Mind and matter are artificial distinctions, and theprinciple of genius may apply to the workings of the cosmositself. What is here and now is always open to the possibilityof inflows of energy from another higher level.After lunch Robert Bragg talked on the theme of

Reincarnation. He pointed out that between 18 and 25% ofEuropeans and Americans believed in rebirth despite it notbeing a Christian doctrine since it was banned by a Councilof the Church in 553 AD. In fact nearly half of mankind holdthis belief. Our memory of ourselves goes back to childhood,but every molecule of our body has changed in 7 years.What then is the relation between mind and matter? Hewent on to discuss his own very personal experience.Despite his home being bombed during the 2nd world war, asa child he always had a strange sympathy for Germany andthe Nazis, and later felt compelled to do research into theS.A. storm troopers, and felt drawn to a thuggish leader whowas killed on Hitler’s orders. His photograph showed astrange resemblance, Later his mother confessed that shehad felt she had a stranger in her womb when she wascarrying him. Was this a case of reincarnation?

The group then had a far ranging discussion on theevidence for rebirth and alternative mechanisms for how itmight happen, if it does.

MEMBERS’ ARTICLES ANDARTICLES OF INTERESTAll the articles listed below are available electronically on themembers’ side of the website or online if referenced.

CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIESA New Classification of Aspects and States of Consciousness (A synopsis of the book ‘Landscapes ofthe Mind: The Faces of Reality’ written as an article forthe Journal of Consciousness Studies)Lawrence LeShan (48 pp)The vital importance of a fruitful classification of theobservables in the domain being studied has long beenknown in science. In the field of consciousness we havebeen unable to devise such a taxonomy. One of the majordifficulties has been the fact that we cannot conceive ofconsciousness before it has been alloyed with material fromoutside of itself. There appears to be no such thing as a

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concept of pure consciousness. The next logical step,therefore, seems to be a classification system of the formswhich appear from these syntheses. These can beconceptualised as organised descriptions of how-things-are-and-work: World-Pictures. The beginning steps of such ataxonomy are presented here with some examples of itspractical applications.

The Bodily Survival of Bodily DeathDavid Lawton (24 pp) ‘Nearly all survivalists are psychic survivalists, i.e. they believethat a soul, spirit, self, mind or consciousness survives bodilydeath. The data that are most challenging to a theorist ofpsychic survival are those that are most suggestive of what Icall ‘somatic survival’: data such as reciprocal and collectiveapparitions; apparitions with functioning external bodies andinternal organs; birthmarks or birth defects in rebirth casesthat correspond to the fatal wounds of the previous person;marked facial resemblance between the rebirth case and theprevious person; the subsequent identification of unknownpersons encountered in near-death experiences, death-bedvisions and apparition cases, through physical descriptionsand photographs; and so forth. In this paper I will first argueand then explain that survival is as somatic as it is psychic –and as somatic without qualification. Therefore, I shall bearguing for somatic survival in the sense of the survival of thebody and not for embodied survival in the sense of survival ina body. Somatic survival entails embodied survival, butembodied survival of a very specific kind.’ This is a ground-breaking paper that is essential reading for psychical andconsciousness researchers.

Are the Neural Correlates of Conscious AwarenessSufficient to Explain Subjective Experience?John Sikorski (18 pp)Experimental and imaging advances in neuropsychology haveenhanced our understanding of the mind-brain relationshipthrough modelling the Neural Correlates of Consciousness(NCC), however cognitive neuroscience struggles to explainthe first-person subjective experience of phenomenalconsciousness. Critics maintain that the reductionistmethodology of conventional science is inadequate for thestudy of subjective experience, that mental phenomenacannot be solved algorithmically. Quantum theory, however, isbased on probability values of events manifesting. Under thisparadigm, laws of cause and effect are superseded byholistic principles of synchronicity and interconnectivity,allowing a deeper investigation of non-local properties ofneural function

Against Consilience: Outsider Scholarship and theIsthmus Theory of Knowledge DomainsMike King (16 pp)Why should the division of human knowledge be a bad thing,and the putative unification of knowledge be a desirablegoal? What could it mean, to walk into a university library andunify its contents? Obviously, it would mean nothing. i

Integration of Scientific and Religious ExperienceAmrit S. Sorli (4 pp)Science is developing rational and analytic experience of theworld. Religion is developing synthetic and consciousexperience of the world. Science and religion have incommon ‘the observer’. In science observer is observing andbeing conscious about scientific models of the world createdby the scientific mind, he is observing experiment which

proves or disproves a model. In religion the same observeris observing and being conscious about religious dogmas,rules and convictions; in religion observer is searching forinner experience of god, of sacredness of the world. Theobserver is the integrator of science and religion. Besideobserving and being conscious of the outer material worldand inner psychological world observer has ability to observeand experience him/herself. Self-experience is creating therealised human being in which are integrated scientificanalytic and religious synthetic experiences of the world.Realised human being is the ground for peace andharmonious living between different races, religions andnations, for cohabitation of man and nature.

The Holographic SoulIan Lawton (6 pp)The modern focus on topics such as the power of now,cosmic ordering, quantum mysticism and cosmicconsciousness has led many people towards a spiritual viewthat places the emphasis on the idea that we are all One.But what of the persuasive evidence that we are alsoindividual, reincarnating souls? How can we bring these twoideas together, and does the key lie with the principle of thehologram?

Facts Emerging From the Bonniol Et-Conversations / Book:The Chronicles of Aerah.George Moss (2 pp)Significant facts concerning space, ET-communication andplanetary ways have come from or have been confirmed bythe Bonniol conversations. Many revelations were, and stillare, considered to be of such magnitude as to justifypresentation in their full ET-conversational context—hencethe book’s format—a Star Trek style but strictly NON-fictionadventure that reveals TRUTH OF EXISTENCE. This refers tothe brief review of the book on p 66 of the last issue.

MEDICINE-HEALTH

Therapeutic Touch Stimulates the Proliferation of HumanCells in Culture Gloria A. Gronowicz, Ph.D., Ankur Jhaveri, B.A., Libbe W.Clarke, R.N., T.T.P., Michael S. Aronow, M.D., and TheresaH. Smith, Ph.D. (6pp from JACM, Vol 14No 3, 2008, pp.233-239)An experimental assessment of the effects of therapetictouch on the proliferation of normal human cells ascompared with sham or no treatment.

Scientific Proof for HealingUniversity of Connecticut - November 2008 (2 pp)Summarises the research above.

Thoughts on Addiction and TreatmentBarry Mitchell (4 pp)Experience in General Practice, over a forty year period,where I have employed the tool of Hypnosis and tranceinduction in patients with the varying problems of addiction,has taught me much of the content of this article. A commonfactor within the ambits of obesity, alcohol dependency andopiate addiction, is the absence of a significantunderstanding of sprit, and a searching for the meaning andpersonal significance of Mind. The SMN is moving forwardsto the attainment of this goal, and I offer a collection ofthoughts based on the results of clinical practice.

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ECONOMICS-ECOLOGY-FUTURE STUDIES

Economic and Financial Crises in a Historical PerspectiveWolfgang Michalski (19 pp)Text of the lecture given at this year’s Mystics and Scientiststhat draws out parallels between the global financial crisesof 1857, 1929 at 2007. It makes fascinating reading.

Economic Slavery and Economic TerrorismFrank Parkinson (16 pp)This paper has been written to introduce my forthcomingbook Economics and the New Slavery, hopefully to bepublished in late 2011. The terms ‘slavery’ and ‘terrorism’ inthe context of economics are not by any means exaggerated:they refer to actions deliberately taken to break down thelegal and political structures of the nation and bind itscitizens into a system where they spend their lives workingfor the benefit of others.

What Is The Ecosystem Approach To Fisheries And HowHas It Been Implemented? What Are Its MajorImplementation Challenges And How Might They BeTackled?Russell Galt (25pp)As world demand for fish and fishery products continues toescalate, fish stocks and the ecosystems they inhabit arerapidly degrading. Mindful of the inadequacies of conventionalfisheries management, this paper considers how a moreholistic approach, namely the ecosystem approach tofisheries, can reverse these alarming trends. Howeverconsiderable implementation barriers remain. Drawing fromthe experiences of the Convention on the Conservation ofAntarctic Marine Living Resources, the major challenges forthe implementation of the ecosystem approach to fisheriesare identified and potential solutions are proposed.

The Turquoise Revolution Innovation and SustainableSolutions – An Urgent Appeal to Scientists,Environmentalists and ProgressivesBrian O’Leary (9 pp)Humankind has created a synthetic world that works againstnature rather than with nature. As a result, our world iswoefully unsustainable in spite of the best intentions ofmany of us. We must now act decisively to reverse theexploitation of the Earth’s resources if we as a civilisationare to have any hope to survive and thrive.

Are Humans Unsustainable by Nature?’William E. Rees (22 pp)This paper is an exploration of an extended and admittedlysomewhat discomforting hypothesis, namely that the humanspecies, H. sapiens, is unsustainable by nature. In short, I amproposing the deteriorating state of the biophysical world andthe threat that it poses to the human prospect is a naturaloutcome of what humans themselves have evolved to be.

Environmental Pollution by Microwave Radiation– A Potential Threat to Human HealthJ. Bigu del Blanco, C. Romero-Sierra, J.A. Tanner (21 pp)An official report dating back to 1973 and as such of greathistorical interest. ‘Due to the ever-growing application ofmicrowave devices in industry, research, for militarypurposes, and domestic appliances (encouraged in part bythe advent of economic solid state microwave devices)microwave background radiation may increase to adangerous level in the near future. This presents a potential

threat to human health and measures must be taken tocontrol the proliferation of these devices and theirapplications.’

Organic farming shows limited benefit to wildlife University of Leeds (2 pp)Organic farms may be seen as wildlife friendly, but thebenefits to birds, bees and butterflies don’t compensate forthe lower yields produced, according to new research fromthe University of Leeds. In the most detailed, like-for-likecomparisons of organic and conventional farming to date,researchers from Leeds’ Faculty of Biological Science foundthat the benefits to wildlife and increases in biodiversity fromorganic farming are much lower than previously thought -averaging just over 12 percent more than conventionalfarming.

GENERAL

The Media Response to the Growing Influence of the9/11 Truth Movement: Reflections on a RecentEvaluation of Dr. David Ray Griffin Global Research,December 12, 2009(http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16505). Elizabeth Woodworth (15 pp)

The Media Response to the Growing Influence of the9/11 Truth Movement. Part II: A Survey of AttitudeChange in 2009-2010Elizabeth Woodworth (12 pp)

Bryce Taylor – his life’s work - On behalf of the Directorsand Oasis - 1 April 2010Nick Ellerby (3 pp)Funeral oration for Bryce – well worth reading by those whoknew him.

Law or Chance – Reflection on Life’s ProcessesRichard Lumley Jones (6 pp)In the sphere of biology, acrimonious debate betweencreationists and evolutionists is often confused, due to thefailure to distinguish between questions about the origin oflife and questions about the origin of species. Consequently,the debate diverts attention from the wider issues of howpeople and nations may live sustainably with one another,and with the environment, for many generations to come.

Online articles by Anthony Judge:www.laetusinpraesens.orgEngaging with the Inexplicable, the Incomprehensible andthe Unexpectedhttp://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs10s/inexplic.php

Enacting Transformative Integral Thinking through PlayfulElegance A Symposium at the End of the Universe?http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs10s/enplay.php

Tao of Engagement — Weaponised Interactions andBeyond Fibonacci’s magic carpet of games to be playedfor sustainable global governancehttp://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs10s/engatao.php

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NEWS AND NOTICESEdge Science – a new publication from the Society forScientific ExplorationThe Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) is aprofessional organisation of scientists and scholars whostudy unusual and unexplained phenomena. Subjects oftencross mainstream boundaries, such as consciousness, ufos,and alternative medicine, yet often have profoundimplications for human knowledge and technology. The SSEwas founded in 1982 and has approximately 800 membersin 45 countries worldwide. The SSE publishes a peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of Scientific Exploration (JSE),and holds annual meetings in the USA and biennial meetingsin Europe. EdgeScience is a new magazine from the SSE.Why EdgeScience? Because scientific knowledge is still fullof unknowns. What remains to be discovered—what we don’tknow—very likely dwarfs what we do know. And what we thinkwe know may not be entirely correct or fully understood.Anomalies, which researchers tend to sweep under the rug,should be actively pursued as clues to potentialbreakthroughs and new directions in science. The SMN willbe holding a joint meeting in Ireland with the SSE in Autumn2012.

The View Beyond – invitation to contributePolair Publishing is planning to issue, in time for Sir FrancisBacon’s 450th birth anniversary on 22 January 2011 avolume entitled THE VIEW BEYOND. It will be a highly eclecticlook at Bacon and his legacy, and takes as its brief Bacon’spioneering of scientific method - through to the frontiers ofscience today – alongside more esoteric studies of Bacon’sinvolvement with less visible programmes for theAdvancement of Learning. The subtitle brings the twotogether: ‘Sir Francis Bacon and Today’s Atlantis’ (to beconfirmed). Contributors are invited to join a list which already includes

Bacon scholar John Henry, actor-director Mark Rylance,history of art specialist Nick Lambert, esotericist PeterDawkins. It is hoped that the scientific quotient will includewriting on neuroscience, consciousness, scientificresponsibility in the age of the Bomb and the nature of thehealing process. Other topics will be considered. Contributions need to be shorter than 5,000 words, and a

short summary needs to be sent to Colum Hayward at PolairPublishing (colum@polairpublishing.co.uk) as soon aspossible; finished chapters are required by 31 August,although a little leeway is possible.Polair Publishing produced a similar volume, entitled

simply THE VIEW, for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 150th birthanniversary last year.Colum Hayward, Dave Patrick, editors

William Bloom and Nigel AnthonyFoundation for Holistic Spirituality and the UK Census2011The Foundation for Holistic Spirituality cic (F4HS) is a not-for-profit campaigning and educational body working in theemerging culture where spirituality, education, healthcareand citizenship converge. It is actively seeking to collaboratewith similar bodies and has two big projects for this year:

The Spiritual Landscape of Britain – mapping and listing allholistic and spiritual activities in the UK so that we can allhave a more informed and accurate picture. This will enablebetter connections and networking amongst our emergingcommunities. The beginnings of the map can be found at

www.holisticmap.org where you can register yourself or yourorganisation. F4HS is also collaborating with the WrekinTrust to enable local and regional groups or round tables toemerge to support the growth of spiritual community.

UK Census2011 – F4HS is asking people to put HOLISTIC inthe upcoming Census religion box so that there can be astronger voice for contemporary spirituality in society and ininterfaith dialogue alongside the traditional faiths. Moreinformation on how to get involved can be found atwww.f4hs.orgContact F4HS at admin@f4hs.org or 07947 114553

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science-philosophyof scienceBeyond Dualism Martin Lockley

THE THIRD CULTUREJohn Michael BarnesAdonis Press, 2009, 138 pp., $15.00, p/b - ISBN 1 978 0 932776 40 2

John Barnes, author and moving forcebehind Adonis Press, writes: ‘There isno greater satisfaction for the forcesof the human soul than to participatein, to discover, the creative principlesat work in nature. For they are of thesame origin.’ This succinctly tells thestory of the Goethean approach toscience and explains the book’ssubtitle: Participatory Science as thebasis for a Healing Culture. Putanother way ‘Nature’s laws manifestin the external physical world; butthey reveal themselves to us onlythrough our own inner capacities andindividual efforts.’ (Original italics). [Asan aside, I wonder whether theEureka moment of ‘revelation’ isalways conscious. Are we not oftendrawn to certain teachers, paradigms,philosophies or spiritual traditionsbecause of inner ‘soul’ stirringsbecause of a sense of knowing thatwe may not be able to articulate?] My ‘Eureka moment,’ which later

served as a doorway to GoetheanScience and Anthroposophy, camefrom reading a biology text – Manand Mammals, by Wolfgang Schad.Crudely I thought ‘why don’t theyteach biology this way?’— which Inow know they do in Waldorf Schools.More subtly, on reflection, thisrevelatory text awakened my innercapacities to ‘know’ that Schad hadrevealed laws of nature as yetunknown (un-revealed) to mostbiologists. So Goethean thinking,developed by Rudolf Steiner intoAnthroposophical thinking is a fineexample of The Third Culture whichseeks to integrate what C. P. Snowfamously, in 1956, called The TwoCultures, a mindset which hasartificially divided the western worldinto objective science and subjectiveart. Historically, whether we look atPlato’s distinction between the idealworld of thought and the ‘ephemeralword of the senses’ or Francis

Bacon’s claim that ‘religion belongsto a realm apart form the purelyobjective world of scientific facts’ it isnot hard to see how Dualism hasruled western intellectual thought.Iain McGilchrist’s masterfulexposition on the brain’s division intoholistic right (master) and objectifyingleft (emissary) lobes highlights thepsychological underpinning ofhistorical cultural dichotomies. Although Barnes’ little book

contains much whichanthroposophically-inclined readerswill find familiar, he enlists valuableinput from other sources includingformer Czech Republic presidentVaclav Havel who saw communism asa product of reductionist objectivethinking that ultimately ‘was notdefeated by military force but by life,by the human spirit, by conscience,by the resistance of Being and ofman to manipulation.’ Havel alsonoted our dilemma as we try to find‘an objective way out of the crisis ofobjectivism.’ Barnes also devotesmuch attention to Michael Polanyiand his concerns about the fallacy ofobjectivism, which can never be ‘fullyindependent of our humanexperience.’ Echoing previousstatements Polanyi understood that‘Reality… is not somethingobjectively given. It is only throughour imaginative and intuitive visionthat we begin to grasp it.’ Put anotherway ‘personal knowledge’ involves‘two levels of awareness: the lowerone for the clues or parts’ giventhough sense perception… ‘and thehigher one’ apprehended through ourown cognitive activity.

These different levels of cognitivefunction resonate with different levelsof organisation in nature. Thus theinorganic and organic worlds, thelatter displaying morphogeneticfields, are fundamentally different,and ‘biotic achievements cannot –logically cannot – be everrepresented in terms of physics andchemistry.’ With a living entity ‘weintegrate mentally what living beingsintegrate practically … by dwelling inits motions in our efforts tounderstand their meaning.’ (Originalitalics). [These ideas convergevarious hierarchical schemes oforganisation proposed by Ervin Laszloand Ken Wilber. For example, thePhysiosphere, Biosphere andNoosphere have increasing ‘depth’and complexity and decreasing ‘span’as well as being subject to differentorganising principles.] One of the best examples of the

participatory process comes from thestudy of plant metamorphosis,pioneered by Goethe. Looking at thesequence of leaves on a plant weintegrate mentally (the individual leafmorphology relationships) doing whatthe plant does practically, and so seethe ‘formative movements’ (themetamorphosis of one form intoanother) which are not given directlyto the senses. Schiller famouslychallenged Goethe with the abstractnotion that ‘This is not anobservation from experience, it is anidea.’ To which Goethe, frustrated atSchiller’s lack of true understanding,replied ‘Then I may rejoice that I haveideas without knowing it and caneven see them with my own eyes.’ AsArthur Zajonc says ‘The light of themind must flow into and marry withthe light of nature to bring forth aworld.’ Steiner goes so far as to saythat ‘The outer world is, in the end,only a physiognomy of a spiritualworld.’ When Goethe’s friend Jacobisaid that ‘Nature conceals God!’Goethe replied ‘But not fromeveryone!’ According to Barnes andmany in the anthroposophicalcommunity ‘in the broad context ofthe evolution of humanconsciousness Goethe takes hisplace as a pioneer of a scientificmethod that leads from the empiricalobservation of nature to a new graspof the spiritual principles that workwithin it.’ [Again this is not anabstraction].

book reviewsBooks in this section can be purchased via the Network web site (www.scimednet.org) fromAmazon.co.uk and the Network will receive a 10% commission. In addition, the Networkreceives a 5% commission on all sales if you log on through our web site!

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For most of us it is probablyimpossible to understand GoetheanScience in any depth without somehelp from Steiner who called Goethe‘the Galileo of the organic world.’Steiner understood that Goethe’sidealism dealt not with some‘dreamed up [abstract] oneness of allthings’ but with the ‘concrete idea-content of reality’ – a ‘transformedcognitive capacity capable ofparticipating in the forces at work inorganic nature.’ According to Steinerthese concrete capacities, includeimagination (related to thinking),inspiration (related to feeling) andintuition (related to willing). As thesecapacities are realised throughproper nurturing the human (soul)may experience a new birth ormetamorphosis: but if developmentdeviates from the natural organicformative stream these growthpotentialities are not realised. Steiner agreed with Goethe that in

the past art, science and religion(beauty, truth and goodness) hadbeen united through a dreamlikeperception of the divine in all things,but that their separation had becomenecessary for the evolution of humanconsciousness. But ‘Humanity hasnow reached the age when thesethree streams want to come togetheragain. Further separation woulddeprive the human soul of its health.’This dynamic (of expansion andcontraction) is seen in Barfield’s cycleof participation, separation and finalparticipation, and again owes muchto Steiner’s influence. So ‘just asmodern materialistic sciencedeveloped during the Renaissance tosatisfy the inner inclinations andrealise the inner potential of westernhumanity, thus participatory scienceis arising today in response to theneeds awakened by a furtherevolution of human consciousness.’ Barnes is effective in using

anthroposophical language todelineate trends which often makegood historical sense even withoutdrawing on this spiritual sciencetradition. But we must give creditwhere it is due. Our struggles toovercome the ‘crisis of objectivism’would be much tougher without theseinsights. As McGilchrist hasstressed, abstraction, materialismand objectivism are still entrenchedand it is only in recognising the truepotential of our participatoryconsciousness that we can effect ahealing and bring about third cultureappropriate to the third millennium.

Martin Lockley teaches palaentologyand consciousness studies at the

University of Colorado and is theauthor of The Evolution of

Consciousness.

How Life and EvolutionWorkJohn KappA NEW SCIENCE OF LIFE Rupert Sheldrake (SMN) Icon books, 2009 (3rd edition), 370 pp., £9.99, p/b - ISBN 978 184831042

CREATIVE EVOLUTION –A PHYSICIST’SRESOLUTION BETWEENDARWINISM ANDINTELLIGENT DESIGN Amit GoswamiQuest Books, 2008, 339 pp., $26.95,h/b – ISBN 978 0 8356 085 9

Both authors write that life is a non-material influence. They eschewpolitical correctness, putting thesearch for truth above personalacclaim, and paid the price – ridiculeand marginalisation. Sheldrake’sbook in 1981 got scathing reviews: ‘ABook for Burning?’ …’This infuriatingtract’ …: ‘magic and heresy insteadof science.’ Despite working at theUniversity of Oregon for 35 years,Prof Goswami was never allowed topresent his views there. Both books expose the empty

promises of materialist science andits sterile, depressing philosophy ofgenetic determinism. ‘Can you reallybelieve that all your thoughts andmeanings, your feelings and struggleswith values, and indeed yourconsciousness itself, are just theresult of a random dance ofelementary particles?’(p. 14) Theauthors develop a theoreticalmechanism by which life andevolution works, namely by morphicresonance, in which genes play nopart. Creatures are tuned like radios,or ships guided by radar by whatSheldrake calls ‘formative causation‘,and Goswami calls ‘downwardcausation from consciousness’.

According to Sheldrake, morphicfields are subtle energy beaming downon us from the universe. They containintelligent in-form-ation, and create life,form, behaviour, and memory. ‘Morphic’fields determine the form of thecreature. ‘Morpho-genetic’ fields createthe evolution of form. ‘Behavioural’fields determine behaviour. Morphicresonance recalls memory when tunedto the right frequency.Like electromotive and gravitational

fields, morphic fields cannot beobserved directly. They traverse emptyspace, (or may even actuallyconstitute it) and are capable ofinfluencing physical changes to createorder at a distance without anymaterial connection between them,(called ‘non-locality’ in quantumphysics) They apply at all levels ofcomplexity, influencing such things asprotons, nitrogen atoms, watermolecules, sodium chloride crystals,muscle cells of earthworms, kidneysof sheep, elephants, beech trees, etc.Cosmic evolution involves an

interplay of habit and creativity, asmanifestations of an eternal, timelessset of archetypes. Morphic fieldsevolved causally (upward causation)from what habitually happenedbefore. All animals and plants drawupon and contribute to a collectivememory of their species. This islearned telepathically, (by downwardcausation) so it becomes easier forothers to learn, no matter where theyare in the world. Crystals andmolecules also follow the habits oftheir kind in a similar way. Sheldrakeposits the following four alternativemetaphysical theories of creation, butleaves the choice between them opento the reader to decide for himself:

a) Modified materialism, in whichconsciousness is either an aspect of,or runs parallel to the morphic fieldsacting on the brain. All humancreativity must ultimately ascribed tochance… human life has no purposebeyond the satisfaction of biologicaland social needs; nor has theevolution of life, nor the universe asa whole, any purpose or direction.b) The conscious self, which acts onthe morphic fields, remaining overand above them, as the formativecause of formative causes.c) The creative universe, which iscapable of giving rise to new forms,and new patterns of behaviour,imminent in life as a whole (whatBergson called ‘elan vital’) .It couldbe imminent in the planet as awhole, the solar system, or the entireuniverse. There could indeed be ahierarchy of imminent creativities atall these levels.d) Transcendent reality, in which theuniverse as a whole could have a

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42 Network Review Summer 2010book reviews cause and a purpose only if it were

itself created by a conscious agent orbeing that transcended it as itssource. All created things would thenin some sense participate in itsnature. The more or less limitedwholeness of organisations at alllevels of complexity could then beseen as a reflection of thetranscendent unity on which theydepended, and from which they wereultimately derived. (p237)

Goswami goes further, opting for d)above in his use of ‘God’ assynonymous with consciousness. Hismission is to integrate science andspirituality within consciousness, andin this latest book he integratesbiology with evolution by intelligentdesign, created by a purposivedesigner. The following abyss ofunexplained phenomena in biologycan only be bridged by introducingthe organising principles of vitalismand consciousness:

(a) Biologists know much about themolecules and their attendantprocesses, but next to nothingabout the blueprints for how lifeplaces them in the right place atthe right time. It does so, not bygenes, but by downloadedmemory in morphic resonance,tuned to the right frequency.

(b) The fast tempo of macro-evolutionin the fossil gaps. These are actsof creation by the quantum leapsof downward causation whichoperates alongside upwardcausation (linear development).

(c) What we experience inside us –feeling, thinking, intuition, qualia,self. These are explained by non-material consciousness in thevital body of the aura and charkasystem.

(d) Mind cannot be anepiphenomenon of the brainbecause matter cannot processmeaning. Brain is mattersubstance and mind is meaning-giver substance. Both need amediator - consciousness - tomediate their interaction. Theyboth consist of quantumpossibilities of consciousness,brain being matter-possibility andmind being meaning-possibility.Quantum consciousness collapsesthe possibility waves of both brainand mind to create an experienceof mental meaning, (called athought), and at the same timecreate a memory of that meaning.The evidence for this is oureveryday experience, such astriggering memory to replaymeaning, creativity, synchronicity,dreams in which meaning unfolds,

wrongness in meaning producingillness (such as cancer) which canbe healed by a quantum leap inmeaning that unblocks the vitalenergy (pp. 252-5)

What should we do about the newmeaning from these books? Our destructive tendency comesfrom our psycho-socialconditioning. When we rise abovethis even temporarily, we canchange. We can be harmoniouswith our ecosystem, with ourwhole planet, with Gaia, not bywishing, nor by philosophy, butonly through intention and thecreative process, that is by takinga discontinuous quantum leap. Wethen realise one astounding thing.I choose, therefore I am, and myworld is. The world is not separatefrom us. When we do this enmasse, we leap into a truly Gaiaconsciousness. (p. 295)

Ambassadors fromAkashic Adventureland Martin Lockley

THE AKASHICEXPERIENCE: SCIENCEAND THE COSMICMEMORY FIELDErvin Laszlo (SMN)Inner Traditions, 2009, 278 pp.,$16.95 p/b -ISBN 1 978 159477298 6

It does not seem that long ago thatLaszlo’s 75th book –Science and theAkashic Field was reviewed in theNetwork (90: 2005). In the meantimehe’s been busy as his latestcontribution – The Akashic Experience– brings his total up to a mere 83books! To Laszlo’s credit there is littlerepetition in this latest oeuvre. Unlikebook 75 which was a scientificexposition on such exotic topics asthe quantum vacuum, holographic andzero point fields, and Bose-Einsteincondensates, book 83 is mostly acompilation of reports of personalexperiences from a number of wellknown pioneers in disciplines that wemight loosely characterise asalternative, transpersonal psychology,medicine and consciousness studies.Well-known contributors includepsychologists like Stanislav Grof,David Loye, and Maria Sági, thevisionary artist Alex Grey, thecelebrated physician Larry Dosseyand the astronaut Edgar Mitchell. LikeLaszlo, Dossey, Mitchell and Sági areSMN members, and the book’s laterchapters refer to the work of PeterFenwick and David Lorimer. Largely leaving aside detailed

scientific exposition Laszlo explains

that ‘the Akashic Experience is alived experience in the extra- or non-sensory mode’ in which the subjectno longer feels separate from theobjects of experience. This, accordingto Laszlo, is ‘clear testimony that weare connected to an information andmemory field objectively present innature.’ This in turn leads to theconclusion that ‘The primary stuff ofthe universe is energy and notmatter, and space is neither empty orpassive— it’s filled with virtualenergies and information. Theuniverse is an evolving integralsystem, staggeringly coherent andinterconnected.’ The proof of these interpretations

is in the experiential pudding – thevaried and sometimes remarkabletestimony of Laszlo’s 20 contributorswhose Akashic Experiences could becategorised as various types ofspiritual or religious experience.Several of these people, including C.J. Martes (Chapter 1) and JudeCurrivan (Chapter 5) learned of theirspiritual sensitivity at a young agewhen seeing, hearing or sensingdivine or spiritual beings. Currivanreports one spiritual guardian ‘soenergetic that I felt my whole bodyvibrating.’ [This sounds like certainkundalini experience reports]. Otherslike David Loye report insights intopast lives that were compellinglyverified by subsequent research andcoincidences that brought them tokey locations never previously visited,but somehow known through extra-sensory deja-vu experience. Beyond the realm of personal

experience several of Laszlo’s AkashicAmbassadors have applied theirintuitions in education and healing.Christopher Bache relates that hisresonant, group-mind teachingexperiences at the California Instituteof Integral Studies convinced him that‘Clarified states of consciousness arecontagious’ (his emphasis) and that‘our spiritual ecology simply does not

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permit private awakening.’ Maria Ságirecounts how she came to understandand practice remote healing ultimatelyconcluding that ‘the Akashic field isnot an abstract theoretical conceptbut a working reality.’ However, as EricPearl (Chapter 13) notes, hisexperience of ‘reconnecting’ with theAkashic field was facilitated by hispatients recounting some of the samebizarre and quite unexpectedexperiences he himself hadundergone. This unexpectedresonance snowballed as they weresuddenly and unusually responsive tohis healing touch when his handswere nowhere making direct contact.The patients felt cool breezes whilehis hands often blistered, and evenbled, — ‘not like stigmata’ but withlittle pin prick drops. Some patientseven acquired the ability to heal theirrelatives instinctively with ‘hands near’not actual ‘hands on’ touch. In oneremarkable three month period manypatients had the same experience ofhearing distinct phrases about‘bringing light and information to theplanet’ and the need to continue thiswork. The lessons learned by Pearl and

his patients were that ‘A doorwayopened’ that allowed them to opendoors for others. Moreover they feltthat healing and ‘field interaction’could not really be taught: rather it‘comes about’ when one opens one’sawareness to it – when one givesoneself ‘permission to acknowledge’it. On a related note Masami Saionji(Chapter 14) makes a particularlypowerful statement about thenegative and positive power ofintention, declaring that ‘the energyof our every word …flies into thecreative fields that are formingaround us, greatly intensifying theiractivity. Not only do these creativefields generate our individualhappiness or unhappiness, but theyalso give rise to world conditions ofpoverty or abundance, respect ordiscrimination, environmentaldestruction or rebirth, war or peace.’ The final section of the book deals

with experimental effort tounderstand the Akashic Field with psiexperiments and the like. Grof alsogives fascinating clinical examples ofpast life and reports one patient whoclaimed that ‘emotionally chargedmemories could be imprinted in thegenetic code and transmitted…tofuture generations.’ Whether thisLamarckian ‘mechanism’ can beevoked rather than Akashic fieldenergy is, I suspect, highly debatable.However, the suggestion thattraumatic past life experiences aremore readily remembered, or thatwhat David Lorimer calls ‘empatheticresonance’ between emotionallyconnected friends and relatives

(especially twins) is strong, certainlyrings true as countless examplesattest. So, it is unfortunate if thepowerful reactions that often attendsuch psychospiritual sensitivity aremisread by clinicians as psychoticepisodes (or by sceptics asnonsense). Dossey calls suchresonances ‘non local mind’connections and others note thatthey may convey influence andintentions not just in the present butin the past and future also. The bottom line is that

consciousness remains a mystery: asJerry Foder says ‘Nobody has theslightest idea how anything materialcould be conscious… so much for aphilosophy of consciousness.’ Inconclusion Laszlo summarises histake on some fifteen yearsinvestigating the Akashic field with asummary, scientific expositiontouching on non-locality and otherquantum phenomena which allowparticles to cohere or de-cohere as aresult of their interactions. Thisseems to suggest that, like people,no entity has permanent intrinsicproperties of self independent of theother. Thus ‘the Akashic field is afield of quantum holograms, a kind ofsuperconducting cosmic medium.’Simply put, perhaps for those unableto assess quantum argumentsunequivocally, the universe is only‘one kind of thing.’ This four wordsummary (my emphasis) may not bea literary masterpiece, but if true theconclusion resonates with perennialwisdom that sees the universeholistically as a unified and coherentflux of energy matter of which we area conscious organ ‘blessed – orcursed – with the consummatepassion to find out’… [and even inLaszlo’s case enjoy] ‘…the intuitivecertainly that the world of life, mind,and universe is dynamic and whole,and intrinsically knowable.’ I predictthat sceptics will dismiss manyclaims and interpretations asspeculative, or worse, but for meLaszlo remains an intriguing andinspiring ambassador from thedomain of Akashic adventureland.

Virtue is a Weak ForceMike King

SOLAR Ian McEwanJonathan Cape Ltd, 2010, 304 pp.,£8.89, h/b, ISBN 9780224090490

I read Solar on the Eurostar on theway to a conference in Luxembourgon integral studies. Two of theopening keynote speakers madereference to it, one quoting apassage I had just read. How’s thatfor synchronicity? But Solar’s

unlikeable womanising protagonist,Michael Beard, would have had onlyscorn for such a term. He is thescientist that the SMN despairs of:an unremitting hardboiled positivist.He is also a man that feministswould despair of, taking no interest inchildren, or sharing the housework, orexpressing his emotions bar lust. Buthe is very bright, and when he setsout to woo his first love at Oxford, ahumanities student, he bones up onMilton and wins her with hisrecitation – though he suspects thepoem is a ‘monstrous bluff’. This infact is at the core of the novel: a TwoCultures clash, a little reminiscent ofDavid Lodge’s Thinks… WhereLodge’s novel places the emergingscience of consciousness at its heart– and is almost a primer of thediscipline – Solar is concerned withthe science of global warming.Beard is a Nobel Laureate coasting

on his former success, now overweightand uninspired until a young PhDleaves him notes on artificialphotosynthesis. He heads up aGovernment effort to find new energysources, and shares out amongst theyoung PhDs the task of reading cranksubmissions by the hundred, most ofthem variations on perpetual motionmachines (or what are noweuphemistically called ‘over-unitydevices’). This gives us an earlyinsight into Beard’s scientificphilosophy when he dismisses zero-point energy and then reflects onquantum theory. ‘What a repository, adump, of human aspiration it was, theborderland where mathematical rigourdefeated common sense, and reasonand fantasy irrationally merged. Here,the mystically inclined could findwhatever they required, and claimscience as their proof.’ This is not thefirst time McEwan has targetedmysticism: in Enduring Love theprotagonist, a science writer, is

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book reviews stalked by a mystic. McEwan has

Beard reflect later on about Einstein’sdiscomfort with quantum theory –about ‘long-range spooky correlations’– and Beard’s own lost hopes to bethe scientist to resolve the paradox.Beard is a ‘realist’ in the

philosophy of science, and this getsinteresting when he first encountersserious academics who claim, forexample, that the gene is a humanconstruct. This is where the twocultures become more specificallyphysics on one side and the socialsciences on the other, in thisinstance the discipline of socialanthropology. Beard had learned that‘humanities students were routinelytaught that science was just onemore belief system, no more or lesstruthful than religion or astrology.’McEwan’s brilliance here is tounderstand these two cultures asalmost hermetically sealed from eachother, yet be able to paint convincingportraits on either side. We learn thisabout Beard, a perfect little detail:‘He has always thought this must bea slur against his colleagues on thearts side.’ It is quite credible that aphysics graduate with a stellar careerin the subject should have a mindsetso far removed from the arts as tofind the notion that they thinkscience a social construct a slur onthem. Nor do we find it surprisingthat Beard hasn’t often encounteredthe term ‘hegemony’ in his discipline.While McEwan’s humanities

professors are no more likeable thanBeard, McEwan appears to takes therealist position in science. When itcomes to climate change one couldargue that this is perhaps a vitalmessage to get over. Beardencounters a lecturer in urbanstudies and folklore attending one ofhis presentations on solar paneltechnology and is alarmed to hear:‘I’m interested in the forms ofnarrative that climate science hasgenerated. It’s an epic story, ofcourse, with a million authors.’ Thedegree to which humanitiesgraduates genuinely believe thatscience is a construct or socialnarrative and nothing else, is thedegree to which the findings ofclimate change science will beshrugged off by humankind. ButMcEwan has Beard reflect on anotherhuman dynamic in the response toglobal warming: that ‘virtue’ is tooweak a force: just ‘going to the bottlebank and turning down thethermostat and buying a smaller car’will only delay the catastrophe.The novel is not all science of

course: Beard’s utter caddishnesspropels him towards his owncatastrophe in a drama that is filledwith women who inexplicably love himand want to have his babies, and

filled with antagonists he hastrampled over in his rise toeminence. The novel also includessome extremely funny moments: Ilaughed aloud on the Eurostar at onepoint over an encounter Beard has ona train involving a packet of crispsand a bottle of mineral water. Butmost of all this is a novel wherescience – real serious science – isthe backdrop to the drama, and atthe same time the subject ofthoughtful presentation. The climatechange science itself does not get agreat deal of airing – which isprobably a good strategy given itscomplexity – but the broaderquestions of the nature of sciencedo. The kind of realism that it takesto work in the hard sciences is analmost invisible metier for itspractitioners, so there is a very realjolt when such practitionersencounter the doctrines of thehumanities. The Sokal incident someyears ago is a good example of thegulf of comprehension across thesetwo communities. Another contentious point raised by

Solar is the idea that a scientist canmaster the humanities more easilythan the other way round. RichardDawkins for example appears tospeak eloquently about poetry, but itis rare for an arts person to makemuch progress in physics: the mathsis too hard. The physicist RichardFeynman once made a deal with apainter friend to exchange skillsets,but the artist gave up before long.Feynman however continued to paintand even get regular exhibitions longafter. Is this imbalance inevitable? Top marks to McEwan for pursuing

such questions in a highlyentertaining form.

The Surprising SpiritualTruth about Evolution Martin Lockley

METAMORPHOSIS:EVOLUTION IN ACTION Andreas Suchantke Adonis Press, 2009, 429 pp., $50.00,h/b - ISBN 978 0932776 396 5

Metamorphosis is a truly exceptionaland beautiful book which impartsextraordinary insight into themysterious but highly orderedprocesses of evolution. AndreasSuchantke comes very much from thesame Rudolph Steiner tradition as anumber of other authors like JosVerhulst and Johannes Rohen whohave recently produced remarkableworks on evolutionary biology throughAdonis Press (Network 82 and 99).Like the Rohen book, Metamorphosishas the format of a large textbook,

but even more beautifully illustratedwith stunning photographs as well asmany of the author’s own high qualityillustrations. Although Suchantke hasan extraordinarily wide-ranging and in-depth knowledge of plants, insectsand other animal groups, he explainsthe significance of his remarkableinsights in lyrical and comparativelysimple language, thanks in part tothe skill of aptly named translatorNorman Skillen. Conceptually Metamorphosis is in

many ways a synonym for evolution,originating with the German school ofNaturphilosophie which owes somuch to the genius of WolfgangGoethe. Long neglected in theEnglish speaking world in favour ofDarwinism, and the idea thatevolution is driven by the survival ofthe fittest mechanism of naturalselection, which tends to treatorganisms as material entities thatpassively suffer random fatesdepending on the vagaries of theenvironment, including the ravages ofcompetitive predators, what we maycall the ‘metamorphosis paradigm’ isfinally making a comeback, thanks toslow but inexorable shifts inbiological understanding. Much of this shift comes from the

increasingly specialised and arcaneworld of genetics and the relativelynew subdiscipline of Evo-Devo (TheEvolution of Development), whichrepresents, among other things, anew look at the dynamics ofembryology and development, andincreasing dissatisfaction withvarious aspects of the Darwinianparadigm. The reader ofMetamorphosis could quickly gleanmuch that the mainstream geneticsliterature will continue to miss:namely a profound insight into the farfrom passive, and highly-organised,intrinsic, dynamics of evolution, whichhave played out with incredibleconsistency, one can even say‘purpose,’ throughout the history ofthe biosphere. Suchantke calls these

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dynamics ‘higher-level evolutionaryimpulses’ Thus, evolution is ‘ahierarchically ordered field ofactivities ...building up the physicalorganism at the behest of thesuperordinate organiser.’ Beginning with several chapters on

plants Suchantke shows how theyhave evolved from spore- and seed-bearers to the flowering and fruit-bearing variety through the well knownprocess of juvenilisation or neotony. Ifyou have ever wondered why a beechtree is so big, a fruit tree ablossoming delight, or a garden ofherbaceous plants a riot of flowers,the answer is comparatively simple.The large tree grows continuously andconservatively, never having its growthobstructed by counter forces, namelythe flowering impulse, until it isdecades old. The fruit tree’s growth issuppressed by the flowering impulsemuch earlier, and the herbaceousflower receives the impulse so earlythat it never grows into a large plant,consisting in large part of dead wood.The flower therefore is a way ofkeeping lines of plant evolutionforever young. The flowering impulseis not a measured, electromagneticfield hovering over individual plantsready to censure their growth, but stillits morphogenetic influences are veryreal and far-reaching. The anti-growth effects bring about a

transformation or metamorphosis, aseach leaf approaches the yet-to-be-manifest flower, it manifests a moreand more juvenile stage, and out ofthis growth retardation brings forthentirely new and novel structures, suchas petals and stamens. These in turnare accompanied by complex newcolors and scents. The plant developsa new time body or time gestalt, as theflower reaches out beyond thecapabilities of most primitive plantsinto the sensory world, taking stepstowards a future potential. Here, bycreating exact vegetative and floralreplicas of insects, as in the orchids, itcommunes proactively and purposefullywith the animal world, in a way difficultto explain by natural selection. Suchantke makes much of the

‘biological compensation principle’inherent in this dynamic. He alsostresses the polarity between axialand spherical forces: the formerraying out peripherally like limbs(plant or animal) the latter intensifiedor turned inward into enclosed bud,flower and seed-like forms. Thesepolarities and compensations are rifein the organic world – an intrinsicpart of the biological-evolutionarydynamic. Among invertebrates wehave the insect polarity betweencolorful butterflies given over to theairy, external environment of flowersand light and the enclosed, oftendark, sometimes ball-shaped ground-

and underground-oriented beetle.(Among insects, the ants and socialinsects occupy a middle, mediatingposition, where their avoidance ofdevelopmental extremes allow fornew levels of behavioral complexity). Likewise, among the molluscs the

highly sensitive squid and shell-lessoctopi have outward world orientations,while clams (bivalves) are enclosed insphere-like shells. In between, the in-and-out snails are the only groupflexible (unspecialised) enough tooccupy almost all marine andterrestrial habitats. Such insect-likepolarity occurs in birds, distinguishingthe colorful humming bird, from drab,flightless forms like the nocturnal Kiwiof the forest gloom. Amazingly, whilebutterfly wings and bird feathersdevelop as quite different organs, theystill have perfect color and patternmatching, though only on visiblesurfaces. Such phenomena reveal ‘theexistence of a trans-temporal morphicgestalt active in the formative processof the organism and present as aWhole in all aspects of its living form.’ Despite some outdated comments

(errors) about dinosaurs, Suchantkeotherwise illustrates vertebrateevolution with beautiful images. Wesee the famous coelacanth fish, aliving fossil deep in the waters offeast Africa, rotating its fins in counter-lateral movements (i.e. left front withright rear and vice versa) thatanticipate the limb locomotion ofearly, salamander-like land dwellers.Could a fish really rehearse suchunconscious movements beforedeveloping walking limbs? Equallyfascinating is the fact that the earlyfish were encased in armor (theinward gesture), especially around thehead, and that they slowlyemancipated themselves from theserestrictions by growing more flexiblebodies and limbs. Humans still beardistinct traces of this heritage. Theinfant has a huge head anddysfunctional torso and limbs that ithas to develop peripherally in order tofree itself from the forces of gravity. The implications are remarkable.

Give and take impulses engage withcompensating counter impulses tohold back development andmetamorphose it into new forms.Thus, the plant holds back its growthto internalise the environment (itsincipient sensory relationship withthe world) and produce insect-likeflowers. This internalisation of theenvironment ‘lights up as the innercontent of consciousness.’ Thus the‘spiritual content of nature…[is]…internalised and raised to the level ofconsciousness.’ This is particularlyobvious in humans who only becameself-conscious in the process ofinternalising knowledge of the naturalenvironment (mainly through language

and naming the objects that create aworld of meaning). But as Suchantkesagely notes, the fundamentalevolutionary message is not aboutthe products of consciousness (e.g.,thinking), ‘but about the producer,about consciousness itself.’ ‘When human consciousness

becomes an agent of evolution, thequestion of the continuity of individualhuman consciousness arises.’ Whatthen is the significance of thediscrepancy between our goals,attainable in principle, our actualachievements, and the subtle feelingwe can do better? We must notunderestimate this experience ofwanting to induce a better future. Itonly makes sense if futuredevelopment is unlimited ‘and notcondemned by the absurdity of thedemise of life’ (which does nothappen in the big evolutionaryscheme)! We may see that ‘the self asthe bearer of developmental resolve,has the possibility of further existencebeyond its present life.’ Herein is thesurprising, spiritual component ofevolution made apparent in our ownspecies, and compellingly made partof the evolutionary story bySuchantke’s exposition. May themessage be more widely understoodas biology matures and evolutionbecomes more conscious ofsuperordinate processes!

A Light in the BleakFuture ScenarioGunnel Minett

SPONTANEOUSEVOLUTION, OURPOSITIVE FUTURE (ANDA WAY TO GET THEREFROM HERE)Bruce H. Lipton, PhD andSteve Bhaerman,Hay House Ltd. London, 2009, 480 pp., £13.99, p/b -ISBN 978 1 4019 2580 2

Bruce Lipton is a cellular biologist andauthor of the book The Biology of Beliefwhich has become a popular bookamong many concerned with inner andouter harmony. In this book he hasjoined forces with Steve Bhaerman, apolitical scientist and social activist aswell as comedian, who performs underthe name Swami Beyondananda. Together they offer a perspective

for the future based on biology aswell as political science. Their(perhaps surprising) conclusion isthat we are exactly where we ought tobe in our evolutionary process andthat the future is much brighter thanmany would argue. Drawing on epigenetics, quantum

biophysics, fractal geometry and

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book reviews other cutting edge sciences, their

conclusion is that each human beingis like a cell in the gigantic super-organism that is our universe. Andbecause of this we are part of theevolutionary process and will (justlike all other cells) develop and adaptto our environment. Because our beliefs shape us to a

large extend, all we need to do is tochange our beliefs to initiate aspontaneous evolution. However, this(for most of us) is easier said thandone. In order to change our beliefs,we first need to identify them, tounderstand our part in the world andhow we can change this. This book offers a number of

explanations that together set out avery reassuring contrast to many ofthe much darker future scenariosusually presented by media thesedays. The important part is of courseto distinguish between beingcomplacent and being assured of ourinner potential for change, which thebook also helps to explain. Being co-written by a comedian, the tone andstyle is very light and entertaining,which does not prevent it fromaddressing a very urgent andimportant issue that concerns us all.

medicine-healthMental Health andSpiritualityJulian Candy

SPIRITUALITY ANDPSYCHIATRYCHRIS COOK, ANDREWPOWELL (SMN),Andrew Sims (eds)RCPsych Publications, 2009, 300 pp.,£25.00, p/b –ISBN 978 1 904671 71 8

RELIGION ANDPSYCHIATRYPeter J Verhagen, Herman Mvan Praag, Juan J Lopez-IborJn, John L Cox, DrissMoussaoui (eds)Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, 667 pp., £120,h/b – ISBN 978 0 470 69471 8

The relationship between the spiritualimpulse, whether expressed within aformal religious framework orindependently of such, and theemergent medical speciality ofpsychiatry has been characterised byunease, misunderstanding andsometimes outright hostility andrejection. Freud provokingly wrote ofThe Future of an Illusion, andpsychiatric training has tended untilvery recently to ignore or pathologise

spiritual elements in patients’accounts. Unsurprisingly, theologiansand churchmen have resistedattempts to explain away faith,doctrine and transcendentexperiences as merely the expressionof psychological defence mechanismsor frank psychiatric disorder.Yet ample evidence confirms

clinical experience that people’sspiritual lives and belief structureexert a significant, sometimesprofound, influence on theircontinuing health and on theircapacity to recover from illness, bothmental and physical. For the mostpart that influence is benign.However, while spiritual epiphaniesmay indeed strike those of us inrobust mental heath, we know thatreligious conviction may sometimesbe intimately associated withpsychopathology, particularlydelusions, and occasionally withdevastating mass violence. Thus apsychiatrist must be able todistinguish between an expression ofhealthy spirituality or religious beliefand its pathological counterpart.

Spirituality and Psychiatry (S&P)was published to mark the first tenyears of the Spirituality andPsychiatry Special Interest Group ofthe Royal College of Psychiatrists, ofwhich all three editors have servedas Chairperson. Religion andPsychiatry (R&P), subtitled BeyondBoundaries, is published under theauspices of the Religion, Spiritualityand Psychiatry Section of the WorldPsychiatric Association. S&P has 23contributors; R&P no less than 56.Two co-editors of and contributors toS&P also contribute to R&P, amongother overlaps. Neither volume is atextbook, so comprehensiveness isnot to be expected – the field is tooyoung for that. Rather, each bookcomprises a series of personalaccounts and reflections on thetheme from many and sometimes

widely different vantage points withinpsychiatric practice. Unsurprisingly, the contributions in

S&P show a certain unity of style andcontent, coming as they do almostexclusively from British psychiatry.After an introductory chapter,contributors discuss spirituality inrelation to assessment, psychosis,suicide, children and adolescents,psychotherapy, intellectual disability,substance misuse, neuroscience, theNHS, the transpersonal, religion, thepathology of spirituality, and ageing.Many of the accounts introducepersonal elements, though all areable to cite relevant research fromthe rapidly growing world literature. Iparticularly enjoyed the two piecesrelating to the extremes of life: MikeShooter on children and adolescence,and Robert Lawrence and Julia Headon ageing. Perhaps a future editionwill include a chapter on forensicpsychiatry and the spiritual aspectsof the use of the Mental Health Act,including compulsory treatment.R&P displays a remarkable spread

of topics, illustrating the importanceand pervasiveness of the mattersdiscussed. Just as impressive is thevariety of countries and culturesrepresented by the authors: not onlythe USA, UK and the Netherlands,but also Belgium, Canada, Egypt,Greece, India, Iran, Israel, Japan,Kenya, Morocco, Spain and Thailand.The contributions are grouped, notentirely happily, into seven parts:First Issues (history, philosophy,science, culture), Main Issues(interface between psychiatry and themajor religions), Core Issues (religionand psychopathology), ResearchIssues, Interdisciplinary Issues(psychotherapy, pastoral care,meaning giving), Controversial Issues(religion and the brain), and TrainingIssues. These somewhat arbitrarygroupings illustrate the difficulty ofdevising an appropriate andconsistent framework for the verydiverse contributions that almostwithout exception appear to havebeen written without reference toeach other, and given their diversebackgrounds in contrasting styles.Both volumes discuss the issues of

definition around the term ‘spirituality’and its relationship to religion. R&Pannounces in its title that it is mainlyconcerned with what might be termed‘institutionalised spirituality’, in contractto S&P’s chief (but not exclusive) focuson the spiritual impulse unfettered byauthority and dogma. This means thatthe former must deal with thecontentious and still sadly contemporaryissue of the psychology of religiousfundamentalism and its relation toextremism and mass violence. JohnAlderdice, from a background inpsychoanalysis and extensive

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experience in Northern Ireland as leaderof the Alliance Party, provides asensitive and constructive analysisunder the title ‘On the Psychology ofReligious Fundamentalism.’ By contrast,and towards the spiritual end of theextensive spectrum, Professor AhmadMohit of Tehran University writes on‘Psychiatry of the Whole Person –Contribution of Spirituality in form ofMystic (Sufi) Thinking.’ Within Part Six,Controversial Issues, we may read VanPraag on ‘Seat of the Divine: aBiological Proof of God’s Existence’directly followed by ‘Neuro-Theology:Demasqué of Religions’ by Swaab andVerweij.In an epilogue to R&P Verhagen

and Cook (co-editor of S&P, andcurrently chair of the SIG) describe ajoint initiative of the two sponsoringorganisations (World PsychiatricAssociation (WPA) and Royal Collegeof Psychiatrists) to produce aposition paper on the theme religion,spirituality and psychiatry. AConsensus Statement (CS) wasprepared, but some members of theWPA have raised unforeseen andunexpected difficulties. Theirimportant and significant objectionsto the wording of the CS centre roundtwo main issues: the relationshipbetween religion and spirituality; andtaking a spiritual history. Matters are,I understand, still at an impasse. Doread the epilogue if you want moredetail about this issue.These two volumes are welcome

for their contribution to the currentimpetus for rapprochement betweentheology and psychiatry, and to thefostering of skilful and sympatheticunderstanding of ‘spiritualphenomenology’.

Dr. Julian Candy is a retiredpsychiatrist who took an active part

in setting up the Spirituality andPsychiatry Special Interest Group of

the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Dislocation of the SpiritDavid Lorimer

THE GLOBALISATION OFADDICTIONBruce AlexanderOxford, 2010, 470 pp., £20, h/b –ISBN 978 0 19 923012 9

This immensely important and originalbook will completely reframe yourunderstanding of the wider social,historical, economic and culturalcontext of addiction. We normally treataddiction as an individual or possibly asocial issue, but Bruce Alexander fromSimon Fraser University in Vancouverargues that this is much too narrow aframework of reference. Addressingaddiction as an individual problem

with palliative medical measures orpsychological interventions will nottackle the root of the problem, whichAlexander analyses as socialdislocation, now occurring on aworldwide scale. He pertinently askswhy so many people are dangerouslyaddicted in the globalising world of the21st century where addiction ‘extendsfar beyond drugs and alcohol togambling, shopping, romantic love,video games, religious zealotry,television viewing, Internet surfing andeven an emaciated body shape.’ Thehistorical perspective views addictionas a societal problem and thepropensity to become addicted as alatent human potential appearingunder certain circumstances inespecially vulnerable individuals andcommunities. Alexander’s main target is the

fallout of global free markethypercapitalism, which is producingdislocation on a vast scale,especially in places like China. Freemarket society ‘subjects people tounrelenting pressures towardsindividualism, competition, and rapidchange, dislocating them from sociallife.’ In these circumstances,addiction can be seen as a form ofadaptation and an attempt tocompensate for what the author callsa poverty of spirit arising from vainattempts to fill the void of dislocationwith consumer products or exoticexperiences. Ironically, the bloatedworld economy requires acontinuation of wasteful expenditurein order to maintain economic growth,a topic addressed in my extensivereview of new economic spokes inthe last issue.The book falls into two parts: the

roots of addiction in a free marketsociety and the interaction ofaddiction and society. Alexanderbegins with Vancouver as a prototypeexhibiting all the symptoms heanalyses, arguing that alcoholism andother addictions continue to plaguethe city because they are unavoidableby-products of modernity. The nextchapter introduces a key set ofdefinitions distinguishing what hecalls addiction1, addiction2,addiction3 and addiction4: these aredefined respectively as 1)overwhelming involvement with drugsor alcohol with harmful effects, 2)encompasses addiction1 and non-overwhelming involvement with drugsor alcohol that are problematicindividually and/or socially 3)overwhelming involvement with anypursuit (not limited to drugs andalcohol) that is harmful individuallyand/or socially and 4) overwhelminginvolvement with any pursuit whateverthat is not harmful individually orsocially. These definitionsimmediately widen and refine the

topic and highlight the importance ofaddiction3 in the 21st century. Onestudy found that alcohol or drugaddiction is comprised just under20% of the most severe instances. Inaddition, depression and addictionhave been found to be closelyintertwined problems. A furtherrefinement introduced at this stage isthe distinction between dependencyand addiction. Much of the rest ofthe book is devoted to an analysis ofaddiction3.The next chapter explains in more

detail the dislocation theory ofaddiction, explaining thatpsychosocial integration is a humannecessity and arguing that it isundermined by global free marketsociety in which every aspect ofhuman existence is embedded in andshaped by regulated competitivemarkets. Addiction3 is then explainedas a way of adapting to suchsustained dislocation. A corollary ofthis view is that free market societycan no more be addiction-free than itcan be free of intense competition;addiction goes with the territory.Having said this, Alexander highlightsthe limits of dislocation theory in thatit cannot explain why individuals door do not become addicted. However,he does later propose a series ofpredictions about degrees ofindividual susceptibility. As a way ofclearing the decks, Alxander analysesfour false dichotomies: medicalproblem or criminal problem, out ofcontrol or acting out of free will,psychological or physical addiction,and drug prohibition or legalisation.The next three chapters fill out themain argument in more detail,providing a series of historical cases(for example, the Highlandclearances) and clinical researchreports. It is part of the humancondition to balance the needs forautonomy and belonging, and it is

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48 Network Review Summer 2010book reviews interesting to see in the rise of social

networking a compensation for theloss of immediate communityinvolvement and an overemphasis onindividualism, a point picked up inthe work of Richard Layard andothers on happiness.The first chapter of the second part

explores complex interrelationshipsof addiction and dislocated society isusing five addicted people in threedifferent societies. Interestingly, oneof these is St. Augustine, who alsocrops up later in the context ofconversion psychology. The multipleaddictions of the Scottish writerJames Barrie are analysed, alongwith three other ex-addicts, whosetestimony makes fascinating reading.The following chapter looks at somesocial patterns including bureaucraticmadness and collectiveenvironmental insanity before movingon to various forms of religiousfanaticism, both Christian andMuslim. Alexander argues thatmillions of people are also addictedto free-market orthodoxy, and thatAmerica exhibits a heady amalgam ofChristian moralism, the Market Godand American power. We have seenonly too clearly how this amalgamhas been exported through war andforeign policy. Various means of coping with a

dislocated society are chronicled inthe next chapter, including degrees ofconventionality and unconventionality,and political activism. This paves theway for an extensive discussion ofspiritual treatment for addictionwhich, while laudable, is not seen tobe capable of bringing addictionunder control in free-market society.However, by reframing addiction as aspiritual story with a deeper meaning,many people are immeasurablyhelped and often channel theiraddictive tendencies into moreconstructive outlets as representedby addiction4. Again, Augustine formsan interesting case in point.Alcoholics Anonymous is featured asa modernisation of Christianity, andthe author also refers to the role ofeclectic spirituality such as vipassanameditation. He might also havementioned new religious movementsin general, which offer their own kindof frequently counterculturalpsychosocial integration; at anotherlevel, their emergence might be seenas a consequence of the decline ofChristianity leading to a sense ofspiritual dislocation.Before coming to his own proposals

about how we can best tackle theaddictions created by dislocation,Alexander returns to ancient Greeceand the Socratic dialogues of Plato,with their discussion of various formsof imperfect society, including tyrannyand anarchic democracy. He admires

Socrates’ ‘powerful combination ofrationality, naturalism, compassionand psychological insight.’ The authorsees three main avenues of practicalaction: personal, professional andsocial, commenting that the third levelis the most difficult. First we need toovercome what he calls civilisedblindness and civilised paralysis thatprevent us from understanding andacting on the root causes ofaddiction. The best thing is to find asecure place in a real community.Ultimately, however, we need politicalaction from an aroused citizenry suchas was the case with the antislaveryand women’s emancipationmovement. Alexander sets out hisvision for a form of global societywhere market autonomy issubordinated to the needs forpsychological integration, socialjustice, planetary ecology and peace.He argues that we have a starkchoice between structural change andglobal cataclysm and that ourcollective survival requires a radicalrebalancing of social institutions.Equally, he recognises that thedistinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ isblurred, since we are often implicatedin perpetuating problems as well asimplementing solutions. (RobertReich’s book Supercapitalismhighlights the tensions between ourroles as consumers, investors andcitizens). The final chapter givesexamples of what has been done andwhat can be done, includingquestioning free-market indoctrinationthrough the media, regaining nativeland, reviving community art, andreclaiming Christianity from the rightwing in the US. Last but not least, thecommunity of scholars and the spiritof learning needs to be protectedfrom the encroachment of marketphilosophy and accounting mentalityin universities. Finally, on the lastpage, Alexander contends that weneed to go beyond the first steps ofsocial action and require a globaltransformation in worldview. This, ofcourse, has been one of the coreagendas of the Network. However, thealternative philosophy is not yetsufficiently galvanising; it is and willbe resisted by those with vestedinterests in the current system. Alexander has made a seminal

contribution by writing this remarkablebook as a way of awakening people toa root cause behind our currentaddictive patterns of behaviour. I say‘a’ root cause, because he might alsohave mentioned the mechanisticworldview and the correspondinginfluence of architecture on socialdislocation, a view explored in greatdetail in the work of ChristopherAlexander. The tone of the book ispolemical and the thesis is vigorouslyexplained and defended. It is also

immensely well referenced both interms of notes and bibliography.Interestingly, David Cameron’s idea ofthe Big Society is aimed at creatingthe kind of community involvementand psychosocial integrationsuggested as remedies by this book.However, it is undeniable that thereach of global hypercapitalism is nowso great that other forms of actionwill also be necessary, although theyare unlikely to occur until we haveexperienced a much greater shake-upof the system, such is the power ofinertia allied to the sheer pace ofmodern life. Only other hand, thepower of the Internet createsunprecedented opportunities forcollective social action.

‘The most powerfulweapon on earth is thehuman soul on fire’Yvonneke Roe

OPENING THE DOOR TOTHE WORLDSDr. Annie Paxton (SMN)Basidian, 2009, 344 pp., €15.75, p/b– ISBN 978 0 9562290 0 7

This book is subtitled ‘A handbook forthe future’. Dr Annie Paxton was aretired medical doctor (she died justrecently), and she describes apowerful method of healing usingenergy. She received this informationfrom the ‘Basidian’ via a medium andthe book outlines many of theirconversations.They go on to discussthe nature of the universe, upcomingearth changes and soul development.The book contains some themes

familiar to those of you who haveread widely in this field. A burnt-outdisillusioned doctor, channelledinformation; the link between emotionand disease, our custody ofourselves and the planet, soul groupsand soul journeys.Dr Paxton starts with a candid

account of her own experiences ofbeing a medical practioner in theNHS and eventual early retirementfrom it. She describes how she‘disliked her job and her life had nomeaning’ and spirals out of the NHSvia drink , depression and angerending up retired at 50. Here we canall heave a collective sigh of relief forDr Paxton, and maybe a slight twingeof envy notwithstanding the pain ofthe journey there.Dr Paxton had previously been

aware of a presence speaking to herand eventually receives informationvia a medium from The Basidian.Alarge section of the book describesher conversations with the Basidian -a highly evolved group of teachersfrom the star system Sirius. She

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outlines their healing system. This isdescribed as a new system ofmedicine using the manipulation ofenergy alone. The Basidian areamazed by the human habit ofstoring negative emotions in the bodyand this is considered to be thesource of disease. In their system ofhealing the universal energy isdirected by intention to the spaces inbetween the cells. The cells can thenuse this energy to effect healing.However humans must be truly willingto partake in their own healing - lesscommon than one would believe.(The Basidian are also amazed at ourability to dissemble.)This part of the book was the most

interesting for me although I am sureothers will be entranced by thechapters on forthcoming earthchanges, the nature of the universeand the soul’s journey. There is aclear emphasis that no power caninterfere with a soul’s journey withoutits willingness and that healing canonly be effected when the soul istruly engaged. An interesting bookwith much to ponder on I wonderwhat the psychotherapists will makeof the psychosomatic connection andalso how they would interpret thesignificance of the Basidian and DrPaxton’s uncle and father who guideher at times from the spirit world too.

Yvonnneke Roe is an NHS GP insouth London with an interest in all

forms of Healing. The title is aquotation from the French Field

Marshal Foch.

Healing EnvironmentsGunnel Minett

THERAPEUTICLANDSCAPESEdited by Allison WilliamsAshgate Publishing Company, 2007,373 pp., £55.00, h/b - ISBN 978 0 7546 7331 6

The concept of therapeuticlandscapes, which deals with thedynamic between wellness and placeand how this can be effectively usedin healthcare maintenance, was firstintroduced in the 1990’s by WilbertGesler, Department of Geography atthe University of North Carolina atChapel Hill and a Visiting Professor atQueen Mary College, University ofLondon, He first looked at traditionalhealing landscapes such as Epidaurosin Greece, Lourdes in France and Bathin England. Since then the concepthas developed. One early critique wasthat healing places should not belimited to landscapes already believedto have healing qualities. This critiquehas opened up the subject area in a

number of ways with this currentcollection of 22 papers focusing onmany different perspectives. The papers in the first chapter deal

with traditional landscapes andreview the concept which has itsbasis in cultural ecology,structuralism and humanism. Part 2looks at therapeutic geographies forspecial populations includingsubstance abuse treatment and theUK National Phobics Society. Part 3focuses on applications in healthcare sites and includes papers on amental health facility in London, ahospital waiting room assisted livingresidences in the US and palliativecare in the home.Part 4 addresses contesting

landscapes such as gay bathhouses,landscapes in a third world societywhere poverty and violence are a wayof life and a profoundly unhealthylandscape – the Soviet Gulag. Andthe final chapters in Part 5 looks attherapeutic landscapes from theperspectives of medical anthropologyand environmental psychology. From the perspective of this

reviewer, it is the contributions thatrelate closest to Gesler’s originalideas about therapeutic landscapesthat are the most interesting andrelevant – too many of the chaptersstray into too narrow definitions ofmedical contexts. While these arevalid in themselves they strain theoverriding concept behind thisanthology. It appears that the generalidea of therapeutic landscapes ismoving in the direction of such broadinclusiveness, but in fact takes usaway from the possible healingpotential of natural landscapes andsomewhat muddies the whole issue.If anything, this book inadvertentlypoints the need for more researchinto this core aspect.

philosophy-religionOne Answer and TwoQuestionsMax Payne

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVESON SCIENCE &SPIRITUALITYed. Pranab DasTempleton Press, 2009, 224 pp.,£19.99, p/bISBN 10 1 59947 339 9

This is an interesting collection ofessays on Science and Spiritualityfrom Asian or Eastern Europeanauthors, but it promises somewhatmore than it delivers. It offers avaluable alternative perspective, butraises two questions that it fails toaddress.Sangeetha Menon argues that

Indian philosophy is holistic andtreats experience as a total unity,thereby bridging the abyss which theWestern intellectual tradition hascreated between mind and matter. Itis rather like the way in which, incolonial days, men in London orBerlin armed with nothing but a rulerand a small scale map, divided upAfrica without regard to geographicalrealities or ethnic unities. Oncecreated the artificial frontiers becamethe cause of political, economic andmilitary conflict. So perhaps it is withmind and matter. After all what isstomach ache? Is it something in theexternal physical world, or is it aninner mental experience? The answerhas to be both.Makarand Paranjape continues the

same argument with science andreligion. Again it is pointed out that inIndian thought they are both unifiedin one search for truth. The conflictbetween them is a product ofWestern styles of analysis. Hisargument is partially wrapped up inpolitically correct sociology whichanalyses the question in terms of thecolonial and post-colonial culturalexperience of India. This does notseem a helpful way into the deeperissues.Surprisingly he makes no use of the

work of Radhakrishnan who wasprobably India’s greatest 20th centuryphilosopher who also ended up asPresident. Radhakrishnan sawWestern science as the best and mostuniversal way of exploring the materialdimension of existence and theAdvaita Vedanta as the best and mostuniversal way of exploring the spiritualdimension, the latter finally includingthe former. He does, however, mentionin passing two famous Indians, SriAurobindo and Gandhi, but they raisea problem. Aurobindo was a mysticalactivist who synthesised Darwinian

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50 Network Review Summer 2010book reviews

evolution with the Bhagavad Gita, butafter his death his ashram implodedinto sectarian irrelevance. Gandhi wasa heroic historical figure whose nonviolent resistance to British rulebrought about an almost painlesstransition from the Raj toindependence - as far at least asBritain was concerned. But he was acelibate, vegetarian pacifist whowanted to return India to a simple pre-industrial peasant economy. The Indiahe helped to create is a nucleararmed superpower. Indian spiritualityand the modern world have yet tomesh.Jiang Sheng points out that

Daoism’s flexible equation betweenexistence and non-existence offers amore hospitable mind set to theHeisenberg Indeterminacy Principlethan the rigid logical rationality ofstrict causality and either/or logic ofthe West. This is true, but it wasWestern rationality that actuallydiscovered the Uncertainty Principle,and the quark, and the statisticalrandomness of the radioactivedisintegration of the atom. In thesame way Indian spirituality claimsinsight into the inner energies of thehuman body through the idea of thechakras and kundalini energy, but itis Western sanitation and vaccinationthat has dramatically increased thelife expectancy of the average Indian.Again the full mesh between Easternspirituality and Western science hasnot been traced.A second unanswered question

arises from the contributions fromEastern Europe. Just what is opentheology? Coming from an intellectualgeneration that has only recentlyescaped the restrictions of Sovietrule, it is understandable that severalshould assert the virtues of an opensystem of thought as proclaimed byPopper and Polanyi - a previousgeneration of refugees from Central

Europe. They all see a harmonybetween the open inquiries ofscience and theology. However thetitle of the book is ‘Science &Spirituality’, while for thesecontributors spirituality meansreligion, and religion means Christiantheology. To revert to Radhakrishnanagain, he interpreted religions suchas Hinduism and Christianity ascrystallisations of a higher spiritualityinto limited local dogma and ritual.There is a problem here on therelation between religion andspirituality. Furthermore what doesopen theology actually mean? Theopen system of science forces it tobe dynamic, and the consensus onits central paradigms evolve andchange. Newtonian mechanics giveway to Einstein’s relativity. Regardlessof heresies and mavericktheologians, the consensus of theChurches’ theology has remainedfixed in the declaration of the Councilof Chalcedon in 451 A.D., that JesusChrist was the 2nd person of theTrinity and Perfect Man and PerfectGod. It is proud to proclaim the fact.Would open theology self destruct inthe manner of John Hick’s The Mythof God Incarnate? Would it offer anew spiritual vision for the 21stcentury? The question is left in theair.This collection of essays is as

interesting for what they do not say,as for what they do.

A Deeper ConnectionDavid Lorimer

AN INTRODUCTION TORELIGIOUS ANDSPIRITUAL EXPERIENCEMarianne Rankin (SMN)Continuum, 2008, 286 pp., £24.99,p/b – ISBN 978 0 8264 9821 2

Marianne Rankin is Chair of theAlister Hardy Society, with whichmany readers will be familiar. SirAlister Hardy, FRS (1896-1985) wasprofessor of zoology at Oxford andwas advised by his FRS father-in-lawearly in his career (I remember himtelling this story) not to pursue hisinterest in spiritual and religiousexperience until he had establishedhis scientific reputation. Accordingly,having given the Gifford Lecturesduring the 1960s, he retired fromOxford in 1969 and set up theReligious Experience Research Unit,now a centre in the University ofWales, Lampeter, with records of over6,000 experiences. Marianne drawson these and many other sources inthis extraordinarily wide-ranging study.Hardy himself defined religiousexperience as ‘a deep awareness of

a benevolent non-physical powerwhich appears to be partly or whollybeyond, and far greater than, theindividual self.’ The ‘Hardy question’put out to newspapers was: ‘Haveyou ever been aware of or influencedby a presence or power, whether youcall it God or not, which is differentfrom your everyday self?’ He himselfhad experiences where he ‘wasovercome with the glory of the naturalscene’ and falls on his knees in aprayer of gratitude.The point of these experiences lies

in their implications for ourunderstanding of the nature ofconsciousness and human life. Manypeople, including myself and theauthor of this book, take them as anindication of transcendent levels ofreality, and it is certainly true to saythat whatever the interpretation, ‘forthose who have them, theirexperiences serve to deepen theirapprehension of the mystery of lifeand intensify their appreciation of itsintricate complexity.’ (p. 256) Theyalso strengthen the case for belief inthe Divine without of course offeringconclusive proof. A notable feature of the book is its

comprehensive and systematiccoverage of the field. It begins withan overview of terminology rangingthrough religious, spiritual,paranormal, NDEs, OBEs and morespecialised terms associated withparticular individuals such asExceptional Human Experience (RheaWhite) and Peak Experience(Abraham Maslow). It then coversspiritual experiences in relation toreligions, including new religiousmovements and even quasi-religionslike Marxism. Two chapters onexperiences of founders of religionsfollow, the first on major religioustraditions and the second on lesswell-known traditions including the

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Brahma Kumaris, Baha’is,Theosophists and various gurus suchas Sai Baba, Ramana Maharshi,Mother Meera and even NealeDonald Walsch and Deepak Chopra.This range of coverage is bothrefreshing and stimulating (and couldhave included Peter Deunov). Next come chapters on religious

and non-religious triggers of spiritualexperience such as prayer,meditation, silence, darshan,pilgrimage and fasting, then places,illness, accidents, depression, natureand music. All these are illustratedwith fascinating first-hand accounts,as are the descriptions of types ofspiritual experience such as light andlove, which will be familiar toresearchers in mystical and near-death experiences. Negative spiritualexperiences and the dangerousaspects of spiritual movements arealso covered. There is a separatesection on death and dying, thenaccounts from well-known mysticsand spiritual and mysticalexperiences of well-known people;occasionally, these put moreemphasis on the life than theexperience, and include Jung,Wilberforce, Gandhi, Bonhoeffer, ChadVarah (Founder of the Samaritans),Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, CicelySaunders, the Dalai Lama and AungSan Suu Kyi. Some fruits of spiritualexperience are described –orphanages, the Prison Phoenix Trust,religious orders and the South AfricanTruth and Reconciliation Commission. The final chapters survey

contemporary spiritual experienceresearch and interpretations ofspiritual, religious and mysticalexperience from Schleiermacher tothe present day. Many names will befamiliar such as William James,Ninian Smart, Aldous Huxley, JohnHick and Keith Ward, but there arealso sections on A.J. Ayer, DonCupitt, Daniel Dennett and RichardDawkins. This serves to convey whatI said at the beginning of the review,namely that this is a book of unusualscope, providing a kaleidoscope ofmaterial and an eclectic range ofsources. As such it is a primer forthe beginner as well as a mind-stretcher for those more familiar withthe field. The message is one ofdepth and transformation: we livewithin deeper orders of reality ofwhich we occasionally become aware,but the experiences of others, as setout in this book, can serve aspowerful reminders of an underlyingpurpose and meaning in our lives.

Not Deep EnoughMax Payne

VARIETIES OFSECULARISM IN ASECULAR AGEed. Michael WarnerHarvard U.P., 2010, 337 pp., £33.95,h/b - ISBN 978 0 674 04857 7

The transition from WesternChristendom to the modern post-Christian secular West is a significantcultural shift in world history. CharlesTaylor’s A Secular Age is a detailedacademic study of what hashappened, and this book is acollection of 12 essays and apostscript by Taylor commenting on it.Alas this would-be magisterial studydoes not get to the bottom of theissue.Though a committed Catholic,

Taylor is not concerned to condemnthe rise of secularism or to applaudit: the intention is to understand it.His concern is deliberately limited tothe interplay of secularism andWestern Christianity. One contributorpoints out that it would helped theunderstanding of secularism if itsimpact on a Moslem society such asTurkey had been considered. It wouldindeed have been a good idea toexamine why Kemal Ataturk thoughtthe Moslem Ottoman Empire had tobe converted to a secular society inorder to make it into a modern state.Unfortunately the rest of the essay isconcerned with a comparative studyof the problems of banning theheadscarf in France and Turkey. The central argument of A Secular

Age is that two developments havebeen crucial in turning the West intoa secular society – individualism anddisenchantment. Individualism hasmeant a shift in European psychologysuch that a person today is expectedto make up their own mind about theworld, and their beliefs about it,whereas in the Middle Ages they sawthemselves as primarily a member ofthe community of the Christianchurch. Disenchantment is the way inwhich all the magical, spiritual, andoccult forces which once surroundedMediaeval man have all beenexorcised. Modern man lives in auniverse of totally material forces.Yet, as Taylor observes, religionsurvives even in that most modern ofsocieties – the USA. He suggeststhat the reason is that sciencecannot explain some of the mostvaluable parts of human experience.Love, music, tragedy and humourcannot be explained in terms of thefour fundamental forces of nature.Secularism is therefore notnecessarily the inevitable end pointof Western culture.

The mediaeval world view was of auniversal church teaching a universaltruth. The breakdown of this worldview could have been more clearlyanalysed in terms of threeoverlapping movements, anti-clericalism, secularism, andmodernity. The Cathars, the Hussitesand the Protestant reformers werenot anti-religious – far from it – butthey were hostile to the overweeningauthority of the Catholic church. Lateranti-clericalism in the Frenchrevolution, the Russian revolution,and the Spanish civil war was muchmore extreme. Again the demand fora secular space outside the authorityof the church is not necessarily anti-religious, as the mediaeval strugglesbetween Pope and Emperor showed,but this space has expanded untilreligion has been pushed out into thefringes. On the evidence of theessays in this book, these processesdo not have appeared to have beenset out in sufficiently forceful clarity.The key process in producingcontemporary secularism is‘modernity’ , or the triumph ofscience and its attendant technology. Taylor and his commentators seem

to take this for granted, but ratherunderestimate its force. It is muchmore than mere disenchantment.Once men prayed to God to helpthem against plague and famine: nowwe demand vaccination, betteragricultural management and foodaid. The way to a better life isthrough electric power not piety.Above all Western Christianity wasbased on the Bible, and the Biblesaw the Earth as midway betweenHeaven and Hell. Modern astronomyputs the Earth as a planet circlingone star of billions in just one galaxyin a universe of billions of galaxies.This conflict between the scientificand religious world views isparticularly acute for Christianity. Thisis not merely because the Churchunwisely adopted Aristotelianscience. Christianity is a religionbased on history. Its central dogmaas pronounced by Paul of Tarsus isthat Adam and Eve were separatelycreated by God and placed in theGarden of Eden. They and all theirdescendants were punished by avengeful God for the sin ofdisobedience until it was atoned forby Jesus Christ on the cross. AllChristian theology hinges on thisbelief and all the evidence of geologyand evolutionary biology contradict it.Few of those who wash their cars

on a Sunday instead of going tochurch have given much thought tothe theology of the Atonement, butChristianity’s lack of ultimateintellectual justification has echoeddown into a popular feeling of itsirrelevance. Yet Taylor is right.

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52 Network Review Summer 2010book reviews Distinguished scientists are

Christians. They feel that there issomething transcendent beyond thematerial universe they study.Important human feelings such aslove, forgiveness and self-sacrificeare given meaning by religious belief,and the easiest way to affirm thesedeep insights is through ourcivilisation’s ancestral culture.Religious belief may be a

psychological necessity, but is it truein ultimate reality? Fairy tales,fantasy, science fiction are allexercises in human imagination, andwe would be poorer without them, butthey are not necessarily true. Is thereanyone there? Is there a dimensionof consciousness higher and beyondthe neuronal activities of our brains.Mystical experience, the logical limitsof materialistic science, paranormalphenomena all suggest that this isso. It is unfair to criticise a book fornot dealing with a question it has notchosen to address. If there is notranscendent reality then secularismin some form is the fate of all humancivilisation. If there is such a reality,then in a profound sense the mostsuperstitious primitive religion isright, and the most scientificallysophisticated secular materialist iswrong. This is the fundamentalquestion about secularism, and thosewho are interested in it will find thisbook of only marginal relevance.

The Road Less TravelledDavid Lorimer

HISTORY OF THECONCEPT OF MIND –VOLUME 2Paul S. MacdonaldAshgate, 2007, 478 pp., £18.95, p/b– ISBN 978 0 7546 3992 3

The first volume of this magisterial workconcerned the history of the concept ofmind within the recognised Westernphilosophical tradition. Here PaulMacdonald tackles the heterodox andoccult tradition with the samethoroughness of scholarship andstaggering erudition as was apparent inhis earlier book. While most Westernphilosophy travels along Platonic,Aristotelian and Epicurean (materialist)lines, there are other less well-knownheterodox (‘other-belief) ideas that onlysurface in the few universities wherethere is a chair in Esotericism like Paris,Amsterdam and Exeter (NicholasGoodrick-Clarke). We are accordinglyfamiliar with mainstream ideas. And asMacdonald points out, there are otherdistinctive features of heterodox ideas ofmind, soul and spirit: they are arcaneand esoteric (occult means hidden); theyexplain techniques for the soul’s ascent;they are closely related to magical ideas

and their effects are achieved throughcorresponding techniques. One resultsin the learning of the philosopher, theother culminates in the wisdom of themagus, initiated into the inner laws ofthe cosmos and its symboliccorrespondences. In modern terms it isthe difference between Bertrand Russelland G.E. Moore on the one hand andRudolf Steiner, C.G Jung and PeterDeunov on the other. Philosophy is notinherently transformative; philosophersdo not normally ‘work on themselves’,whereas the mystical process is analchemical transmutation. The book begins with an account of

life, death and the soul in the AncientNear East – Egypt, Mesopotamia andthe Zoroastrian religion – moving onto shamanic traditions and secretteachings about the soul in theHermetica, Gnosticism, Manicheanideas and teachings about the soul’sascent. There is a chapter onByzantine teachings followed anextensive treatment of Christianmystical ideas about the soul’sascent from the neo-Platonic era tothe late Middle Ages. Magical ideasabout the soul from the mediaevalperiod to Goethe come next, with aconcluding chapter on a plurality ofdualisms and the duality of life. Allthe great names and a good manyobscure ones besides are treated inthe course of the book. To name buta few: Plotinus, Iamblichus, Porphyry,Dionysus, Eriugena, Eckhart, Bernardof Clairvaux, Mechtild of Magdeburg,St. John of the Cross, Roger Bacon,Francis Bacon, Raimon Lull, CorneliusAgrippa, John Dee, Paracelsus andRobert Fludd. There is an interestingsection on mediaeval women mysticsincluding such lesser known namesas Hadewijch of Antwerp, Angela ofFoligno and Marguerite Porette, whowas executed through the Inquisitionin 1310. Her Mirror of Simple Soulsnevertheless survived in six differentversions in four languages, making itone of the most widely read texts ofthe Middle Ages.

It is appropriate that the main bodyof the book concludes with Goethe‘in whose long life’s work many of theheterodox lines of thought come tolife again: Egyptian wisdom,Manicheism, Hermetica, Gnostica,alchemy and high magic.’ There is along analysis of Faust in relation topolarities and the reconciliation ofopposites, with what Martin Bidneycalls a process of selving andunselving, falling away from andreturning to the Source. This is ‘aregular oscillation between thecreative contraries of contraction andexpansion, inhaling and exhaling,opacity and lightness, are the innerlaw of our human life.’ WhatMacdonald does not say, however, ishow this process also relates toGoethe’s understanding andmethodology in science, which Imention in my review of ArthurZajonc’s book in this issue. The last chapter provides a

fascinating discussion of the differentkinds of dualism in Western thought.Cartesian mind-body dualism is themost familiar in philosophydepartments but it is a sub-categoryin relation to cosmic dualism,anthropic dualism (a double nature inhumans) and axial dualism (good andevil). There is a variety of dualistworldview ranging from radical(Manichean and Gnostic) to moderate(some variants of Catharism) wherethe second principle derives from thefirst. In the West, the world-machinetook over from the world-spirit in the17th century but there are signs thatthe world-spirit and an esotericworldview are making a comeback inorder to redress the imbalance in ourculture. In this context, Macdonald’sbook can serve as an encyclopaedicpoint of reference to a relativelyneglected aspect of the history ofideas sitting alongside his earlierwork. Together these books representa massive intellectual achievementthat deserve a wide readership in theacademic community while at thesame time being accessible to theinformed general reader.

Interspecies Ethics – ANew Moral Frontier?David Lorimer

IN DEFENSE OFDOLPHINSThomas I. WhiteBlackwell, 2010, 229 pp., £16.99,p/b – ISBN 978 1 4051 5779 7

This powerful book challengesreaders to redefine theirunderstanding of dolphins as ‘non-human persons’ with ethical rights,and is based on a thorough review ofthe research literature as well as

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fifteen years of personal experience.Many readers will have readanecdotes indicating the specialcapacities of dolphins, but this bookprovides enough evidence to begin todraw philosophical and ethicalconclusions about the status ofdolphins. It boils down to two ultimatequestions: what kind of beings aredolphins? And, what does our answerto the first question say about theethical character of human/dolphincontact, specifically in terms of fishingpractices involving the death ofthousands of dolphins a year andtheir use in captivity as entertainers?In this context, philosophersdistinguish between human as ascientific concept and person as aphilosophical concept implying self-consciousness, intelligence and ameasure of free will. So is a dolphineffectively a non-human person?The chapters cover a number of

key areas: the anatomy andphysiology of living in the water,including a comparative analysis ofthe capacities of human and dolphinbrains; do dolphins think and feel,and can they solve problems andunderstand language? What is thenature of dolphin social intelligence?When these questions are analysedand broken down, it becomesapparent that dolphins do haveremarkable capacities. Anatomically,the surface of the dolphin brain ismore convoluted, it has a biggercerebral cortex than humans, asubstantial associational neocortexand the structure of the limbicsystem is different. All this makes itthe second most complicated andpowerful brain on the planet. This capacity is borne out in the

experimental findings discussed insubsequent chapters. Dolphins passthe standard mirror test for self-awareness used in humans and theydo not treat their reflection as if itwere another dolphin. The evidencesupports conclusions that dolphinsare aware of themselves and others,they experience basic emotions, theyengage in thinking processes andcan choose their actions. Thesequestions are explored in greaterdetail in the next chapter reporting onproblem-solving and languagecapacity. Lou Herman’s researchshows that dolphins can followinstructions in basic artificiallanguages, both acoustic andgestural, and can even understandsimple new sentences using thefamiliar components. Having considered the experimental

evidence, White returns to thephilosophical implications of thefindings with an eight-part definition ofa person, which he uses to evaluatedolphin intelligence. Dolphinsmeasure up on all counts, which

sounds amazing until one has readthrough the analysis for oneself. Onecan argue that the notion ofpersonhood is flawed, anthropocentricand dependent on language, but itdoes provide one measure that canalso be applied to other species.Accordingly, White refines his owndefinitions, concluding that dolphinsappear to be a ‘who’ rather than a‘what’. This naturally leads on to aconsideration of interspecies ethicswith highly practical implications for, inthe first instance, tuna fishingpractices such as purse seining,which has resulted in the deaths of 6-7 million dolphins. In spite ofpreventive action, dolphins areregularly chased and trapped. Inaddition, thousands of dolphins arekilled every year in drift nets. Theethical status of our actions harmingdolphins is clear. The argumentrelating to benefits and harms tocaptive dolphins is different and morecomplex, but some analogy to slaverycan be made when considering theirbasic wellbeing and needs. Otherissues arise in relation to their use inhealing and, more controversially, formilitary purposes in detecting mines.Ironically, dolphins seem to treat usbetter than we treat them, lendingweight to White’s argument. Evenreading this review may have modifiedyour understanding of the ethicalstatus of dolphins, but reading thebook itself will certainly do so.

A Prophet for our Time?Max Payne

WORLD AS SANCTUARY The Cosmic Philosophyof Henryk Skolimowski ed. David Skrbina & JuanitaSkolimowskiCreative Fire Press 2010, 229 pp.Available from David Skrbina –skrbina@umd.umich.edu for $20 inUS and $25 outside. See alsowww.ecophilosophy.org

This is a collection of essays bysome of those who have beeninspired by Henryk Skolimowski’s

philosophy ending with a postscriptby Henryk himself. In the perspectiveof the 20th century HenrykSkolimowski was an obscuremaverick philosopher, in the 21stcentury he may become one of theprophets of our time. In total worldhistory he may become one of thegreat spirits who have inspired theupward evolution of mankind.Skolimowski’s philosophy starts

with the diagnosis of a deep woundin Western culture. Philosophy sincethe 18th century has combined withthe rise of science to produce adominant empiricism which hasseparated facts from values. Thenature of the outside world gives usno clue as to the meaning of ourlives, or the way in which we shouldlive them. It also produces the totalsplit between mind and matter. Thishas produced the many ills of ourtime, social alienation, environmentaldegradation and cultural anomie. Intotal contrast his eco-philosophyrecognises that our minds and ourbodies are part of nature, and weshould play our role in it withreverence and joy. We are notsomething separate from the rest ofnature. We should not dominate ordestroy as we will. We must act withreverence and respect as a part ofnature. Above all we must actresponsibly as self-aware agents inthe upswing of the evolution of life onthis planet. This positive moral visionis something beyond the fashionablepragmatic ‘greenery’ of politicianswho perceive the economic andpolitical dangers of possible climatechange. It is the proclaimation of apositive and optimistic identificationwith the planetary life force.Such a philosophy has disturbing

unconventional consequences. Thefirst is that the whole rational analyticprocess of modern Western thoughtincluding the triumph of modernscience is, all of it, on the wrong track.It separates man from Reality insteadof inviting him to participate in it. Thesecond consequence is that itdemands that the philosopher himselfshould seek not merely understandingbut wisdom, and wisdom impliesknowing oneself and seeking furtherenlightenment for one’s own mind. Thewhole fashion of 20th century Anglo-Saxon philosophy for positivism andlinguistic analysis is thus dismissedinto irrelevance by this requirementTwo questions immediatetely arise

from Skolimowski’s philosophy. Thefirst is how is it possible for him to beso optimistic? The second is exactlywhat role does science play in his totalvision? In his youth he lived throughthe horrors of Poland in the 1940’s –devastation, death and oppression. Heembraces the life force, but nature isred in tooth, claw and parasitical

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much with the physics concept,because it is very similar to thespiritual concept also. Ultimately,everything that is experienced as ascene, everything that is seen is anillusion. It is not a truth, only theexistence of the self is truth.’ Babajiexpands on these concepts furtherduring the dialogue makingcompelling reading.When asked if is it possible to

understand that state of Realisationfrom the faculties of mind Babajireplies: ‘Impossible, because mindexists based on its own imaginations.Its only quality of existence isimagination. The moment it loses all ofits imaginations, mind is no more amind, it is Consciousness ofExistence…’ More probing questionsrelating to Samadhi and Realisation areasked which Babaji clearly answers.When questioned if the brain’s

reflections get erased during Tapasand if they become purified Babajiexplains: ‘Yes, it is purified. Thebrain’s reflections are very minimal; itdoes not affect the mind. Only if theconsciousness wants it applies thebrain. It does not allow the brain togo on playing on its own. Now the Selfis the master. It is commanding boththe brain and the mind’s activities.’ The book concludes with a deeply

inspirational set of aphorisms, knownas the ‘Golden Verses,’ which wererecited spontaneously by Babajiduring a retreat. As the pages are turned the wealth

of knowledge from a great masterstarts to penetrate the inner layers ofthe mind bringing the reader closeralong the path to Self Realisation.This book is truly unique in that it isnot based on scriptural study butfrom profound, personal experienceand is highly recommended.

Babaji is a Self-Realised Yogi - onewho has completed the path of Yogaand attained union with the Self. Fortwenty years Babaji devoted himself tosadhana (spiritual practice) andserved His Guru, Shri Shivabalayogi,being initiated into a monastic life ofmeditation, devotion and service.Following His Guru’s physical passingfrom the world in 1994, Babajientered into the spiritual state ofTapas, in which he maintained themind in complete stillness duringmeditation for twenty hours a day. Fiveyears of Tapas culminated in theattainment of the goal of all spirituality- self realisation, the permanent unionof the mind with the supreme peaceof infinite pure consciousness. The book is divided into three parts

and consists primarily of a dialogue ofquestion and answers betweenserious spiritual aspirants and Babaji.Babaji answers clearly and conciselydrawing from his own deep personalexperience and profound spiritualinsight to unlock the secrets tospiritual progress and Self Realisation. Part one details Babaji’s teachings

and questions most frequently askedby visitors to the Ashram. It focuseson the meditation technique and livingspiritually in the world. As Babaji says,‘You can be in any way of life and stillbe perfectly spiritual. All you need todo is to adopt the methods. Whateverexercise you undertake, it must helpyour mind to recede, become morepeaceful, quiet and composed.’Babaji illuminates the unity of all

spiritual traditions in one simpleteaching ‘All you have to achieve isthat one hundred percentconcentration of the mind. When themind becomes totally concentratedwithout any resolution, without anythought, then it automatically goesinward toward the self and ultimatelysettles there with supreme peace,totally contented.’Part two details the higher

teachings. For these intimate talksBabaji again answers from deeppersonal experience of the ultimatetruth rather than scriptural study. It isdivided into almost thirty chapters withtopics such as: The mind and itstricks, pure consciousness: the gapbetween thoughts, true peace lieswithin, the self is beyond allImaginations, samadhi and realisationand beyond myths and illusions.Babaji clears misconceptions aboutspirituality, inspiring readers to take upsadhana seriously.In one chapter Babaji enters into

dialogue with a scientist. Whenquestioned if everything exists inwaves but when the mind focusesand positions itself sees the particleand the wave no more exists(Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle)Babaji replies: ‘I would agree very

torture. How can he be so joyful ? Theanswer is that he is a mystic. The termis not used lightly. For him the veil hasbeen rent, and he has sensed thetranspersonal light beyond skull boundeveryday experience. He knows thateverything shall be well, and allmanner of things are well.There remains the problem of

science. In his vision of the ‘Light’Henryk Skolimowski wants a newcosmology in which science, themeaning and purpose of life, and theupswing of spiritual evolution all areone. In this perspective modernscience appears inadequate andlimited. Our knowledge of cosmologyand the atom may be as limited ashe says, but it is aware of its ownlimitations and is part of an openself-correcting system. Howeverimperfect, it is still knowledge withtremendous power for good and evil.It is surely not without somesignificance that medical science hasnearly doubled the life expectancy ofmankind during the last century.Does his vision merely dismissscience, or does it transcend it ? Thevision of a great spiritual teachercannot be subject to rationalanalysis, but teachers have disciples,and disciples have followers, andfollowers create sects. The history ofreligion shows how much sects needthe process of open self criticalanalysis which is the bench mark ofthe scientific attitude.Henryk Skolimowski gives us an

inspiring vision of the future, andleaves us with the problem of how weget there from our present. This bookshould encourage those who havenot read his works to delve furtherand acquire greater inspiration.

Self-RealisationSharon Barkatullah

THE PATH SUPREME –CONVERSATIONS WITHSHRI BABAJI AT THEDEHRADUN ASHRAM,HOME OF HIS TAPASTranscribed fromconversations with Shri ShivaRudra Balayogi Maharaj SRBY (UK), 2010, 277 pp., £14.99,h/b - ISBN 978 0 9564479 0 6

The Path Supreme is a rare andunique opportunity to read the higherteachings of a Yogi that havetraditionally only been revealed to theclosest disciples. Shri Shiva RudraBalayogi, affectionately known asBabaji, has allowed His deepconversations at the DehradunAshram located at the foothills of theHimalayas to be transcribed andedited to illuminate the path to SelfRealization.

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Network Review Summer 2010 55

hallucinations, as did Jesus in his 40days in the Wilderness. At the finalbreak-through, when his egodisappeared and he came intoenlightenment, the Buddha is said tohave cried ‘Ah! The morning star.When the morning star first shone,there was I,’ a reference to hisuniversal and timeless nature whichhe now perceived. Then, finallyrecognising that the ego was allillusion and had fallen away from him,he said ‘Oh house builder, you havenow been seen! You shall build ahouse no longer. All your rafters havebeen broken, your ridge poleshattered. My mind has attainedunconditional freedom and the end ofcraving is achieved.’Now I have spent some time on

this, because the tensions that werepresent in the Buddha’s time are stillapparent today. Although it is notJohn’s purpose in this book to look atmodern tensions underlying thestruggle for enlightenment, the ideasof gradually purifying the mindthrough meditation or the suddendeconstruction of the ego allowingenlightenment to arise are still thesame today. Is the search forenlightenment a gradual purificationof the mind or, in specialcircumstances, will the ego shattersuddenly with little prior work and atrue view of the cosmic nature ofmind suddenly break through? Suchpeople as Merrel Wolff and Wei WuWei, and indeed even Shankara,seem to suggest that both areneeded and that the finaldeconstruction of the ego is alwayssudden and not approached bystealth as the grace of final egodissolution is given from outside. Forhow can the ego being deconstructedcause its own death and the vastexpansion of mind that follows?

his upbringing and went out to seekhis true nature. It is not surprisingthat he went through a phase ofbeing an outcast, associated withforest dwellers and was taught by anumber of highly experiencedmeditators, amongst whom wasArada Kalama. Here he learned profound Yoga

meditation which he studied withgreat vigour. The aim was to practisethe purification of the self, elementsof which transmigrate to merge withthe greater self, the Absolute orBrahman. His teacher told him hehad reached the meditative plane ofnothingness but, having achieved thisand pleased his teacher, Siddharthadid not feel that this led to an endingof desire and so left this teacher andjourneyed on. His next teacher hadreached the meditative plane of‘neither perception nor non-perception’ and after periods ofintensive meditation Siddhartha alsoachieved this plane but found thatthis too was unsatisfactory, as it didnot lead to dispassion and theending of desire. These were theplanes of absorption. He argues thatif this was not the way and theseplanes were dependent on states ofmind then what was the mind doing?So he used the technique of passivewatching of the mind, vipassana, atechnique he is reputed to have usedas a child in the palace. We havenow to imagine Siddhartha wanderingthrough the hills and forests of India,practising this technique, and Johnquotes a wonderful statement whichmay make us cancel our tickets toNorthern India and remain inEngland, when he quotes the Buddharemembering ‘It is hard to respondadequately to these remote abodes,the woods and hills of the forests.Solitude is hard. It is hard to enjoybeing alone. It is as if the woodssteal the mind of the monk who doesnot concentrate.’ So back onto yourzen cushion and your sitting practiceright here in the unforested UK. Siddhartha continued with his

searches. There is short section onhis difficulties with differenttechniques until, finally realising thatthrough the forest practices and self-denial he was committing suicide, hecame to a small village in a beautifulgrove near a river. Here a youngwoman took pity on his condition andgave him rice and gruel as he sat onfreshly spread grass beneath a largeBo tree (as can be seen in Kewgardens). For 49 days he sat therepractising his focused watching .John says nothing in the book aboutthe temptations of the Buddha, but itis now argued in some quarters thatbefore the ego is destroyed andfinally gives itself up, the seeker willencounter very vivid and strong

psychology-consciousnessstudiesWorld Crisis andBuddhist Humanism

END GAMES: COLLAPSEOR RENEWAL OFCIVILISATIONJohn CrookNew Age Books New Delhi, 2009, 408pp., £19.99, p/bISBN 978 81 7822 325 4

I recommend that you all payattention to this book because it iswritten by John Crook, who is the first‘European Dharma Heir of the Masterand Teacher of the Western ChanFellowship.’ He has done intensiveZen practice with the venerable ChanMaster Sheng-Yen of Dharma DrumMountain, Taiwan and New York. John is also a PhD and DSc and isEmeritus in the Department ofPsychology, Bristol University, and apioneer of socio-ecology andevolutionary psychology. Who betterqualified to write a book on thecontribution that Buddhist humanismcould make to the current mess wehave got ourselves into?But that is not all. John is a

wonderfully accessible person. Heruns Zen sesshins (retreats) on thetop of a Welsh mountain (not reallyon top of a mountain, justmetaphorically so, actually at awonderful retreat in the Welsh hills).The path to the hut in the winter iscovered in snow and the heat isprovided by a wood-burning stove. Ifany of you are interested in thedelights of John’s sesshins tohammer your Ego then see SueBlackmore’s Ten Zen Questions. So what does John have to say? In

the early part of the book hedescribes the origin of Buddhism inAsia and its spread through China toJapan. What I found most interesting,mainly because I had not fullyunderstood it, were the social factorsand religious pressures existing inIndia at the time the Buddha wasenlightened. At that time the Brahminclass were the holders of thereligious rights, ceremonies andpriestly hierarchies. Those who werenot born into the Brahmin class orwho had rejected it, left society andwent into the forest. These forestdwellers then set out to investigateand develop their own spirituality,practising, often intensively, thetechniques of meditation that wereavailable. The Buddha Siddhartha,who was the son of a king, broughtup in the palace with little contactwith the outside world, finally rejected

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56 Network Review Summer 2010book reviews John discusses Proto-Chan 500-600

AD and how these ideas spread outthrough the Silk Route into China, thearising of Early Chan in 600-900 AD,the differentiation of these schools inthe Song Dynasty Chan, 950-1300 ADand the spreading out of the Soto andRinzi Schools and finally, modern andpost-modern Chan-zen. There is a wonderful section on the

Self and consciousness, as seen froma modern perspective, and he usesthe device of asking how the presentworld would seem to the returningBuddha. The Buddha does return andmeets Jim, a highly intelligent waiter ina café in Soho, and they have lengthydiscussions about the current views ofthe Self, a thorough review of modernphilosophy and psychotherapy (apsychotherapist is included in thisdiscussion|). The device works welland those of us who are uncertain ofour Kants, Descartes, Wittgensteins,Schopenhauers, Sartres etc will enjoythis section. Finally John looks at thesearch for a future which is able toovercome the mess that we are in.John is very clear about the nature ofthe current crisis, which is related tothe overweening demand of the selffor security. This results in much ofthe over-consumption of today. Theungroundedness of the self affects allareas of our lives. John comments‘The economy is essentially an areafor illusory solutions toungroundedness then the whole of theconsumerist world view is anchored ina fundamental but unacknowledgedanxiety. Consumerism has a hiddenspiritual objective, albeit an illusoryone, in the attempts to compensatefor ungroundedness. It is our modernreligion and it has spread world-widethrough a globalisation that hasproved irresistible. The notion of asecular world is actually mistaken.Beneath the secular veneer spiritualneeds dominate but in largelyunconscious ways.’ He quotes Loy assaying that ‘God has actually notdisappeared, but rather reappeared asthe functioning of the Nation State,the market economy and our scientificprojects, as if they were a source forgrounding our activities in anobjectified reality.’ John suggests that education is

the best, if not the only way forward,and that what is now formally entitledReligious Education be replaced bycourses called Humanity, or Scienceand Ethics, and perhaps sub-titledWorld Renewal. He gives a number ofheadings indicating how we mightchange our education and points outthat ‘Such a course would enable atrained teacher to integrate objectiveand subjective approaches toknowledge and understanding, sothat a holistic post-Cartesianperspective can arise, giving an

appropriate broad picture of thehuman dilemma.’It has been impossible in a short

review such as this to give a full oreven adequate account of thewisdom and knowledge that is in thisbook. John is a very special personwith a wonderfully wide training,vision and understanding of theprojections of the ego that we allmake and call reality. A wide anddifferent form of education is hissolution so that the anxieties of theego can be tamed and world renewalbegun. Perhaps then, like Siddhartha,some of us will even be able to claimthat we have seen and destroyed thehouse-builder and have been presentwhen the morning star was firstcreated, living cosmically. Please geton to your Zen cushion, possibly evenset aside time for a sesshin in Walesand please get this book and read it.You won’t be disappointed.

Dr. Peter Fenwick is President of the Network

Towards anEpistemology of LoveDavid Lorimer

MEDITATION ASCONTEMPLATIVEENQUIRYArthur ZajoncLindisfarne Books, 2009, 211 pp.,$14.99, p/b – ISBN 978 1 58420 062 8

Arthur Zajonc’s earlier book, Catchingthe Light – an entwined history oflight and mind, won the NetworkBook Prize some 15 years ago, andhe has a wide range of interests. Heis professor of physics andinterdisciplinary studies at AmherstCollege, director of the Programme ofthe Center for Contemplative Mindand a senior programme director atthe Fetzer Institute. In addition, he isformer general secretary of theAnthroposophical Society of America,a pioneer of Goethean science and aparticipant in scientific dialoguesheld with the Dalai Lama. I say allthis to indicate the scope brought tobear on this remarkable book, whichhas been endorsed by Peter Sengeand Allan Wallace. Many writers have remarked on the

imbalance between inner and outeras a feature of modern Westernculture. Correspondingly, we valueouter over inner work, but the price iswidespread mental, emotional andspiritual unease – even distress,calling for a rebalancing of ourorientations, which Arthur richlyprovides in this book. This representsan extension of science, thecultivation of qualities such ashumility, reverence and equanimity

that give us an enhanced sense ofwellbeing as we work on our thinking,feeling and willing and at the levelsof body, soul and spirit. Arthur sumsthis up (p. 178) in the stages ofcontemplation: ‘Contemplativeenquiry rests on the sound moralfoundations of humility andreverence. In addition, thepractitioner cultivates his or herpowers of concentrated attention,equanimity in the feeling life, and astrengthened resolve.’ The book is interspersed with

instructions on many forms ofmeditation based on words, images,geometrical shapes, sense contentfrom nature (sky, trees, flowers) in aprocess of what Arthur calls ‘cognitivebreathing’ – alternating betweenconcentrated attention and openawareness. This leads to a sense ofmore subtle dimensions of reality andthe emergence of the ‘Silent Self.’ Wereach a deeper rhythm and realise theneed for constant renewal as we seein the activity of Nature. Rhythmimplies repetition, and spiritual practicemust become embedded in our dailylives. This is where we need tostrengthen our resolve, the quality ofour will, through regular small actionsand bringing a finer awareness andattention into our everyday rituals. Thishelps overcome the inertia of innerlaziness, to which we are all prone. Inspired by John Muir, Thoreau and

Goethe, Arthur offers meditativeexercises in Nature and quotesAntonio Machado: ‘The deepestwords of the wise man teach us thesame as the whistle of the windwhen it blows or the water when it isflowing.’ And he adds: ‘No words thatwere ever spoken can equal thesound of the wind in the pine trees.’Arthur takes us to a mountain pondand into a process that elicitswonder, reverence, participation andself-surrender: an experience of thesacred, which, together with othertechniques can lead to a greatersense of harmony and balance. Ayoga of the senses takes us throughthe four elements and on to Light,Love and Life, which form the core ofPeter Deunov’s system correspondingto mind, heart and will, Wisdom, Loveand Freedom. Light and Love arefundamentally intertwined, evenidentical in deep experience. In this sense, we discover that

knowledge or insight is an event inwhich we participate. The fact, asGoethe insisted, leads us to theorythrough a delicate empiricism inwhich we are fully implicated. Tostand back objectively is to retreatinto abstraction, to lose sight of theoriginal meaning of ‘theoria’ ascontemplation. Science andphilosophy are both ultimately aboutinsight and illumination. Arthur lays

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this all out in the nine characteristicsof contemplative inquiry: respect,gentleness, intimacy, participation,vulnerability, transformation, organformation, illumination, insight. Organformation requires a little moreexplanation and comes from Goethe’ssaying that ‘every object, wellcontemplated, opens up a new organin us.’ As we attend to the object, weform a circuit that creates a newform of perception throughparticipation. We also come to understand the

process, activity and even agencythat gives rise to the varyingappearances and forms of nature,‘natura naturans’ rather than themore passive ‘natura naturata’. Inthe plant, this formative activityconstitutes a ‘breathing’ consistingof expansion and contraction: theseed becomes leaf, flower and fruit,containing in turn the new seed. Frompotential to actual and back again, asArthur puts it, with agency behind. AsGoethe said: ‘The highest we receivefrom God and nature is Life.’ For himthis leads to an understanding ofcycles summed up in his phrase ‘dieand become’. ‘Wenn du dass nichthast, stirb und werde, dann bist donur ein trueber Gast auf der dunklenErde.’ (Unless you understand this,die and become, then you are only adismal guest on the dark earth). Bythe end of this enriching book thereader can appreciate howcontemplative enquiry can extendand refine science while balancingthe inner life of the scientist in theprocess. It is a book to savour, apoint of departure to a refined rangeof practices for mind, heart and will.

CAN COGNITIVESCIENCE THINK OUTSIDETHE BRAIN BOX? Martin Lockley

OUT OF OUR HEADS:WHY YOU ARE NOTYOUR BRAIN, ANDOTHER LESSONS FROMTHE BIOLOGY OFCONSCIOUSNESSAlva Noë Hill and Wang, New York, 2009, 214 pp., $25.00, h/b ISBN 1 978 0 8090 7465, $15.00p/b ISBN 1 978 0 8090 1648 8

Almost everything we say – that is allmetaphor – about our place in theuniverse is in some way related toawareness of how our bodies andother major organs are situated inrelation to space and time. We wantto get ahead, put the past behind us,anticipate things looking up, staygrounded and get out of ruts. We

want to reach for the stars, get intouch with higher powers, get out ofour heads (at least two meanings!),go out on limbs and think out of thebox. To many brain centeredneuroscientists there is a strongtendency to equate this box with thecranium, but body-mind aficionadosfind themselves too boxed in by suchparadigms. Alva Noë a Professor of Philosophy

at the University of California,Berkeley considers thatconsciousness is not somethinginside us…like digestion, rather it issomething we achieve.. more likedancing. Therefore, the aim of Out ofOur Heads [let’s use the acronymOOOH] is to convince us of this byadopting a genuinely biologicalapproach to the study of mind andhuman nature. Noë rejects specialistcognitive science jargon as animpediment to understanding, andknows that his criticisms in OOOHwill come across as a politicalattempt to change the world…[and]… shake up the cognitive scienceestablishment. To do this we mustgive pride of place to the whole, livingbeing. In a brisk rejoinder to FrancisCrick’s neuro-scientism Noë statesthat the really astonishing hypothesisis that you are not your brain anymore than an orchestra is a self-playing phenomenon. The subtitle ofOOOH is: Why you are not your brain,and other lessons from the biology ofconsciousness. We are livingprocesses interacting within theworld. Consciousness is, therefore,the joint operation of brain, body andthe world.The OOOH paradigm is supported

by child development studies.Children are not separate brains.Their mothers, for example, areliterally one of the structuresconstituting a child’s psychologicallandscape. Thus, not until the age of

about five do children begin to seeothers as conscious beings. Thistheory of mind paradigm proves thatwe are morally and deeply involvedwith each other – first unconsciously,then consciously. From the outset,therefore, the dynamics ofconsciousness are widely distributedprocesses as much outside as insideany brain- or body-defined box. Theimplications are that a biologicalperspective is essential if themeaningful, non-mechanical nature ofconscious life is to be understood.With this conclusion we open thePandora’s box of panpsychism as thequestion of consciousness arises forall living beings because they allexhibit at least primitive agency.Continuing the out-of-the-box

argument Noë contends that‘consciousness is no more in the cell(neuron) than dance is in the muscle.As cells in the auditory cortex can bevisual…there is no necessaryconnection between the character ofexperience and the behaviour ofcertain cells.’ Seeing for example ‘isnot something that happens to us inour brains. It is something we do.’ And we do things in a world in

which we are involved. [His italics].‘The body is the vehicle of being inthe world’ and being ‘interinvolved’ inthe environment. Experiments withphantom limbs show feeling ismaintained in a lost limb, just as wemaintain feelings for a lost lovedone. In a twist on Ramachandran’sclever relief of phantom limb painusing mirrors and the motion of thereal limb (Network 88), it is evenpossible to experience feeling asbeing in an artificial rubber hand(rather than you own hand) if you seeit being stroked and tappedsynchronously with your own hand!!So where is consciousness? Is it inthe extended body, in the skilfulextension of the mind into the adeptuse of a tool or musical instrument,or even in the mind of the involvedaudience? The best means of extending mind

is language. Here, curiously, theimportant parameter of meaning issocially divided between speaker andlistener: just as the meaning of theknight in chess is not in the pieceitself but in its function. Noëadmonishes mainstreamneuroscientists for clinging to thesimple conception of self that usesthe metaphor of the brain as missioncontrol. He attacks the intellectualistparadigm which sees humans asinevitably novice-like and unskillednewcomers alienated from the worldand always trying to figure it out byintense, mental computer-likecomputational effort. In reality, thosemost skilled at what they do showthe least brain activation when

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58 Network Review Summer 2010book reviews exhibiting the highest performance.

[Incidentally, animal instinct isextraordinarily adept and wise in itsability to intelligently navigate theworld]. Noë also challenges what he sees

as the ‘bad science’ of skepticalcognitive scientists like Dennett andBlackmore who suggest that theperceived world is illusory. It is truethat in the famous Harvard, ‘changeblindness’ experiment, someonegiving directions was interrupted bytwo workers passing by with a door,as a ruse to deliberate replace theperson receiving directions. And theperson giving directions did notnotice the switch. The traditionalexplanation is that the brain buildsup an internal, but false model of theworld. However, Noë notes that ourperceptual skills evolved for life onearth not for a world in which objectsvanish and materialise by slight ofhand. While our cognitive powers maybe limited and vulnerable todeception, in order to understandwhat we see, we actively attune ourattention to the external world. Thereis no evidence we refer to an internaladvisor in brain-centred, missioncontrol. Not content with shooting down

bad cognitive science Noë challengesthe Nobel Prize winning research ofDavid Hubel and Torsten Wiesel oninformation processing in themammalian visual system. Noë seesin this work the shortcomings of thecomputer model and neural basis ofconsciousness paradigm thatassumes vision is something thathappens passively in the brain.Particularly egregious, apart from thevivisection involved, was the fact thatall the work of Hubel and Wiesel wascarried out on animals while theywere unconscious!! We know thatbehaviour of cells in the cortexvaries, depending on what theindividual is doing’ Noëacknowledges that his conclusionsare harsh but he neverthelessdismisses the computer model withthe Zen-like point that a computercan’t think on its own any more thana hammer can pound nails by itself. Hammering away at the perverse

science fiction prejudice that brain =consciousness, Noë points out thatalthough stimulation of the brainproduces experience, so doesstimulation of the body or thatcoming from the environment. Weare, like a soccer player in mid-match, always involved in the game -dynamically coupled with a worldoutside our heads. [Moves don’t playon a screen in our heads, andwatching the game on TV is not asubstitute for being on the team].Noë recommends neurosciencerethink its position from the ‘ground

up. [Note the, evolutionary process,start-in-the world, out-of-the-headmetaphor]. We need to heed thealternative paradigm of an embodied,situated approach to mind. Sometraditions see the world as maya,illusion, or as a flat reality capturedlike a photo by some visual brainmechanism. Not Noë: he concludesthat we are in the world and ofit…patterns of active engagementwith fluid boundaries and changingcomponents. We are distributed —like Noë’s message! The out-of-our-heads metaphor seems a powerfulclue in itself. Would ourconsciousness effectively engagewith the world out there if it weremerely an illusory, brain-centredepiphenomenon analysing replays ofworld events the dark room of thebrain box? Surely the light ofconsciousness is embodied in us all,and in the world equally, and ‘tisillusion to think otherwise.

Abundance Now,Harmony LaterMike King

SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS: THEQUEST FOR THE PEAKEXPERIENCEColin WilsonWatkins Publishing, 2009, 272 pp.,£6.66 p/b ISBN 978 1905857982

Colin Wilson has consistently madeone of the most perceptivearticulations of a specific anduniversal problem in human nature,the problem of what he calls the‘Outsider’. One does not have toagree with his prognosis to find theprecision of his thought to be highlyilluminating. His new book SuperConsciousness: The Quest for PeakExperience is something of arecapitulation of his seminal workThe Outsider, and begins: ‘I am now75, and most of my life has beendevoted to a search for what mightbe called the mechanisms of thePeak Experience, or powerconsciousness.’The Outsider, published in 1956,

was a literary sensation that placedWilson – who was only 24 at the time– amongst the leading writers of hisage. His stardom was short-livedhowever as a critical press turnedagainst him after a minor scandal.His second book was pilloried bymuch the same people who hadraved about his first one, but Wilsonpersisted and has built up aconsiderable following. I confess tohaving only read his first and lastworks, but in re-reading The Outsiderearlier this year was greatlyimpressed with it, and developed the

idea of ‘outsider scholarship’ from itfor a conference paper deliveredrecently in Luxembourg. I define thisscholarship as one that lies outsidethe academy, involves big-picturethinking, and is capable of seeingvery fast the salient features ofthings: novels, peoples, disciplinesand ideas. This is Wilson’s gift as awriter.There is however a more personal

reason why both books speak to meso vividly, and this is the almostspooky perception that when Wilsondissects the personalities ofindividuals like Van Gogh andNijinsky, he could have been talkingabout my father, the 1950s sculptorPeter King. In other words from avery early age I too was preoccupiedwith the problem of the Outsider, andhow to avoid the ‘crash’ that so oftenaccompanies intense creative effort,a crash in my father’s case that ledto his death at the age of 29. I havephotographs of him with staring eyes,perhaps not so different to Nijinsky’s,who also died at the same age, aftera period of superhuman creativeeffort. So Wilson’s question, howpeak experience, powerconsciousness or super-consciousness can be achieved ishedged around with the question ofhow one can stop it killing one.What Wilson did, which perhaps

alienated him from an increasinglymaterialistic mainstream, was toinsist that the Outsider’s problem isat its core a religious problem. Hedidn’t mean religion in the sense ofchurch-going, but more in the senseof a mystical intensity, one that drovefor example Blake, Van Gogh, Nijinskyand the founder of the Quakers,George Fox. Indeed intensity iscentral to the problem, as Wilsonsaid in 1956: ‘the primary aim is tolive more abundantly at any cost.Harmony can come later.’ So whathas over a half-century of reflectionon the problem of intensity he sobrilliantly dissected in The Outsiderled to in his new work? He hasclearly followed all the key intellectualdevelopments during this time, andhas interesting observations to makeon Phenomenology and the thoughtof Derrida for example. Central to hisinvestigation is the Romanticsensibility, which both seeks thisgreater abundance, but so easilycrashes in depression, nihilism orsuicide. He takes Beckett to task forthe nihilism in Endgame: the workprobes the right issues, but isultimately lazy. For Wilson an effortmust be made, and his openness toa huge range of thought, and hisassiduous study of it, is central tothat effort. His clue however came inan obscure text that T. S. Eliotreferenced in the Wasteland: the

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Bhagavad Gita. Wilson seems to havediscovered this around the age of 16,and put its central idea of the identityof Atman (self) with Brahman(cosmos) into practice as a dailymeditation, quite without the benefitof a guru or spiritual teacher. Now in his seventies, he concludes

that humans have eight levels ofconsciousness, and that peakexperiences are glimpses of higherlevels. Without any such glimpseeven the most intensely creativeminds, such as Beckett’s, will fall intonihilism, because the peaks that theydo know are always followed byexhaustion. Where Wilson now findsa place in contemporary thought iswith the conviction that ‘man is onthe point of an evolutionary leap ofconsciousness.’ More people willspend more time in the higherstates, all the way up to level seven,at which point there is boundlessenergy, effortless creativity – and nodowner after the high.Now, I part company with Wilson on

this point: I am not sure thatconsciousness evolves in this way,mainly because I am not sure howyou would falsify the proposition. Thismatters little however, and neitherdoes my own instinct that the key tothe Outsider problem actually lies inLevel 8 of his scheme, which he says‘is not at present our affair.’ This isthe mystical level of consciousnesswhich for Wilson is constituted by aset of paradoxes, such as ‘I ameverything and nothing’. The fear ofall creative people I think is that level8 would spell the end of the tensionout of which creativity arises: it wouldlead to harmony, not the abundancesought by the Outsider. Perhaps theyare right.Whatever we might think of

Wilson’s prognosis for humanconsciousness, or of his specificroutes to peak experience, I can’tthink of anyone who has soassiduously explored the humancrisis of outsiders such as Nijinskyand Nietzsche – noting that the sameindividual was curiously witness toboth their onsets of insanity – and allthose blessed (or perhaps cursed) bysuperhuman creative outpourings. Ionly wish that my father, who wasalready descending into the darknessof his own demise when the Outsiderwas published, had been able to readit and understand its warnings andwisdom. Super Consciousness in turnwould have shown him that creativityand longevity are not necessarilyenemies. And if Wilson is right, thathuman consciousness is evolving,then more and more people willsurvive the gift of genius.

The Vale of Soul MakingNicholas Colloff

A COMPLETE GUIDE TOTHE SOULPatrick HarpurPublished by Rider, 2010, 240 pp.,£9.99, p/b – ISBN 978 1 84604186 0

Imagination is the primary faculty ofthe soul and that imagination is apolytheist might be the shortestsummation of Patrick Harpur’sentertaining, erudite and imageprovoking book. We see the worldthrough a soul’s eye and what we seedepends on which ‘god(s)’ or‘archetype(s)’ we presently inhabit (orare inhabited by). That this configuring of the nature

of things presents numerouschallenges to we, the children of theEnlightenment, Harpur happilyrecognises as he invites us toconsider alternative traditions, mostnotably neo-Platonism, Romanticismand the spiritualities of indigenouspeoples. In passing, his account ofneo-Platonism is one of the mostlucid and engaging that I have readLiving an ensouled, imaginative life

has three principal obstacles.The first is familiar. It is our

materialism that sees matter asprimary and the given discourse ofmainstream science as definitive.Harpur seeks skilfully to deconstructthis way of seeing by evokingdifferent ways of perceiving the world;by a renewed empiricism that takesalternative accounts seriously, forexample, near-death experiences;and, by showing that the language ofscience itself is inhabited by myth.He cites the example of the LargeHadron Collider searching for theHiggs boson - the elusive particlethat gives the world mass and allowsit to pass from the immaterial to the

material, christened the God particle,and, thus, solving the continuousenigma of how the two worlds relate.But such enigmas may not, he

suggests, be solvable and this leadsus to the second scourge ofimagination, namely, literalism. Wethink that something ought to befactual or fictional. It cannot be both.It cannot be myth and yet, as KarlPopper reminds us, ‘scientificdiscovery is akin to explanatory story-telling, to myth-making, and to thepoetic imagination’. If we talk ofmultiple universes that no one hasseen, can we not equally talk ofheavens and hells that people claimdefinitively to have seen, indeedtravelled through, even if theirlocation is strikingly fluid?Literalism, also, stalks religion

wanting to turn the imaginative, livedspeculations of soul that are at onceembodied, ours, particular to placesand traditions and lived withoutedges, or finite boundaries,comfortable with monotheism, withan indwelling unity, but polymorphousin image and practice into confining,hard edged, fundamentalisms.Literalism craves certainty but theimagination craves life that by itsnature dissolves certainties.Literalism demands the facts,imagination imbues the world withfelt meanings.One of the most thought provoking

and original chapters of the bookexplores the relationship betweensoul and spirit for spirit too can bean obstacle to a soulful life.To spiritual, hierarchical thinking,the daimons are at best themissing links between this worldand the world ‘above’. But to soulthey are the very fabric of a singleworld which shifts shape – showsus many different aspects,including the spiritual and thematerial, according to whateverperspective, whatever god, we arelooking through,’ writes Harpur. This, he contends, is a necessary

counterpoint to spirit’s tendency toascend, transcend and depart thisworld for a world above that is clear,light and eternal. Soul takes us down,dark and dirty. Soul celebrates thecomplexity of real life, beingsuspicious of purity, preferring Jung’swholeness to holiness. If neglected orignored, its occupants, deprived ofattention, will return doubly distractingfor, as Jung remarked, the godsneglected return as diseases.Both are necessary but either

driven to exclude the other loses animportant dimension of what itmeans to be human – a tri-partitereality of spirit, soul and body thatinhabits an imaginal space of whichall three are an integral part.

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60 Network Review Summer 2010book reviews This habitation is both given by

soul and emerges as we shape soul– the world is truly, as Keats wrote, a‘vale of soul-making’ and in thatmaking with Harpur we have a guideof sure touch, copious wisdom and aglimmering sense of humour.

Nicholas Colloff is the Director ofStrategy and Innovation at Oxfam GB

and studied religion and philosophyat London and Oxford.

Exploring the AfterlifeDavid Lorimer

THE UNANSWEREDQUESTIONKurt LelandHampton Roads, 2002, 498 pp.,$16.95, p/b – ISBN 1 97174 299 9

This epic book – a sequel toOtherwhere is not for the faint-hearted, consisting as it does of longnarratives exploring deeperdimensions of consciousness andanalytical comparisons with otherclassic texts, notably The EgyptianBook of the Dead, The Tibetan Bookof the Dead and Swedenborg’sHeaven and Hell. The four partsexplore the NDE as initiation (how fardoes it take us?), heavens, hells andin-betweens, the soul’s journey andthe nature of reincarnation, withreferences to Plato’s Myth of Er.These are all stories, perhaps mythsin the non-pejorative sense, but theynevertheless convey profound truthsabout the nature of humanconsciousness. In a mind-dependent world, which

seems to be more immediately thecase in a post-mortem state, ourexpectations can create our reality.Swedenborg already talks aboutpeople who do not realise that theyhave died but we are told that peoplewho have no belief in the afterlife‘can create an experience ofextinguished consciousness’ but atsome point they realise that a part ofthem is witnessing the experience ofextinguished consciousness so theyrealise they have survived after all.Another consequence of mind-dependency is that unexpressednegative emotions such as anger andfear can create the appearance oftraditional hellish landscapes asdepicted in Tibetan traditions. This highlights the importance of

catharsis, classically obtainedthrough watching (Greek) tragedy, butalso depicted in this book as anopera performance as a means ofdischarging emotions. Apparently thiscan also be carried out by thedeceased through the living, even indreams. As one can imagine, theauthor identifies a number of ‘zones’

in the afterlife landscape includingimmigration and emigration zones,rescue zones, rehabilitation andredemption zones. They representstates and transitions in the process,and the author accompanies variouspeople through them, including afriend who died in unfortunatecircumstances in his early 40s. Leland distinguishes, as I do in

Whole in One, between panoramicmemory and deep life review, which hesays is a process of stripping away theemotions attached to the events ofone’s life and coming to understandthe meanings and lessons behindthese events, which are now seenless sequentially than in terms of theiremotional resonances. This reviewalso apparently involves checking thelife as lived against the soul’s ‘masterplan’, a process found in the classicTestimony of Light, by Helen Greaves.Inevitably a sense of self-judgementarises from this comparison as onecomes to realise how much one hadremembered or forgotten along theway. Here, we are told, our deepfeelings can keep us on track. We arealso told that core personalitydevelops as a result of our interactionwith physical reality, the veryobtuseness of which seems toobscure our innate understanding. Therehabilitation process then feedsforward into the circumstances of thenext life. Leland tells us that all this isoverseen by wise Facilitators whosupport the soul with their love andwisdom. Leland has enormous respect and

admiration for Swedenborg, but doesnot agree with his rejection ofreincarnation and has some quibblesabout his heavenly geography andwhat he calls his tendency to over-systematise. He makes aninteresting remark about the goal of

spiritual growth being to achieve aperfect balance between identity andunion, between a sense of self andbelonging to a larger whole – what Irefer to in my Learning for Lifeprogramme as standing out andfitting in. There is an intriguingreference to Herman Hesse assomeone who has graduated from allthe possible experiences of humanand angelic existence. I myself havelearnt a lot from his poetry andnovels and used to read them withmy pupils at Winchester. Lelandwonders about this but was struck bythe remarkable tone of his voice in arecording of Hesse reading one of hisshort stories. So what does one make of all this?

Each reader will bring his or her ownunderstanding and interpretation tothese narratives, all of which –whether ancient or modern – arephysical representations ofsomething experienced outside spaceand time. This invisible realm seemsto be a cosmos or order, and theseexperiences or narrativesundoubtedly contain metaphysicaltruths, at least in a metaphoricalsense. For my part, I found the bookstimulating and enriching and atimely reminder of themes I exploredin depth over 20 years ago.

ecology-futuresstudiesHarnessing the Energiesof LoveDavid Lorimer

THE HOPEAndrew HarveyHay House, 2009, 227 pp., £10.99,p/b – ISBN 978 1 4019 2003 6

Subtitled ‘A Guide to SacredActivism’, this new book by AndrewHarvey has been aptly described byMarianne Williamson as ‘a meteorburst across the inner sky.’ Havinglistened a couple of years ago to apassionate and eloquent CDproduced by the Institute of NoeticSciences and conveying thesubstance of his message, the bookserves as an urgent reminder of ourplanetary predicament and the waysin which we are all caught up in it,whether we like to acknowledge it ornot. Andrew was a contemporary ofIain McGilchrist at All Souls College,Oxford and they have both madesignificant contributions to thecultural challenges we face, even if invery different ways. Andrew’s pathhas combined the mystical with theactivist, being and doing, the fire ofthe mystic with the passion of the

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social reformer. Among the keyinspirations in this book are the DalaiLama, Nelson Mandela, BedeGriffiths and Mother Teresa. It is aheady mixture. The joy ofcompassionate service is yoked to apractical and pragmatic drive totransform all existing economic,social and political institutions. The book begins with ten

suggestions for immediate action,including taking up a daily spiritualpractice, listing what is sacred to youand what you are grateful for, anexercise on forgiveness, skip a mealand donate the equivalent sum andtithe 5-10% of your income to a causein which you passionately believe. Thisprocess jump-starts the book, as do anumber of powerful stories; amongthem an occasion when Andrew gavehis change to a ragged old womanwho used this to buy a chapatti whichshe shared with an equally emaciateddog. An important influence on themystical side was Bede Griffiths,about whom Andrew made a film inthe early 90’s. Fr Bede felt that wewere living through The Hour of God, atime of great darkness and evengreater light. He felt that this timewould call forth an unprecedentedforce for transformation and healing,which is also Andrew’s hope. The second part outlines the Hope

in greater detail while the third partexplains a number of laws as forms ofpractical guidance. The Sun of Hoperepresents the Divine as the union ofLove and Light and the marriage ofopposites as evil gives way to good,destruction to new creation and deathto rebirth. With the help of mysticaltexts from the likes of Kabir and Rumi,we understand more clearly ourrelationship to the Divine, from whichwe can never be separate – we arethat, tat tvam asi. Andrew sees amystical renaissance taking place in

the world through a new reconciliationbetween the sacred masculine andthe sacred feminine. Then the DarkNight is a precursor to transformation,both individually and collectively as theOne is manifest through thesurrendered sacred activist embodyingwisdom, creativity and compassion.The activist has to face the shadowand the five inner saboteurs ofdisbelief, denial, dread, disillusion andthe desire to cease to be. Spelling out the death and the birth,

the first list features environmentaldevastation, the population explosion,the growth of fundamentalism andassociated terrorism, nuclearproliferation, our technologicalworldview, the corporate mindset andour hectic way of life. On the birth sidewe have the crisis and our responseto it – the cultural creatives and thework described by Paul Hawken inBlessed Unrest; creative technologies,democratised media with the Internet,the mystical renaissance, the evolvingphilosophy on nonviolence, the returnof the Divine Feminine and thepotential for the birth of the DivineHuman. Since love is expressed inservice, Andrew describes fiveinterlinked forms as service to theDivine, service to yourself as aninstrument of the Divine (including thebody), service to all sentient beings inyour life, service to the localcommunity and finally service to theglobal community. Part 3 describes seven laws of

sacred activism: sacred practice,surrendering the fruits of action to theDivine, recognising evil, the alchemyof anger, constant and humbleshadow work, joy and the emergenceof networks of grace. Each chaptergives detailed guidance, distinguishingfor instance between so-called warmand cool spiritual practices (we needboth) and drawing on his ownexperiences in learning about humilityand faith. Rumi reminds us that ‘theremembrance of God is force, power,strength and endurance; it is feathersand wings to the bird of the spirit.’Recognising evil means no longerbeing naive about the realities ofpower, combining the wisdom of theserpent with the innocence of thedove. Anger can be transmuted intofierce compassion, while the result ofconfronting the shadow can erode ourself-righteousness and any smugsense of superiority. Finally, theformation of networks of grace is vitalif this revolution of hope is to begrounded, and Andrew suggests howyou the reader can help in your owncircle (see also www.andrewharvey.net)Each of us will naturally find

ourselves somewhere along thespectrum of contemplation andaction, being and doing, mysticismand activism. This radical and

visionary book has the power togalvanise the reader to new levels ofinner commitment and effectiveaction and to kindle a sense ofurgency about our individual andcollective roles and responsibilities inthe face of our planetary challenges.

The S-WordJohn Drew

SPIRITUALITY ANDBUSINESS: EXPLORINGPOSSIBILITIES FOR ANEW MANAGEMENTPARADIGMSharda S Nanram and MargotEsther Borden, editorsSpringer, 2010, 263 pp., $60, h/b -ISBN 978 3 642 02660 7

This is a difficult book title. Businesspeople are uncomfortable with theword ‘spirituality’ and yet talk easilyabout values in business, ethics,morality, corporate socialresponsibility (CSR) or at the margineven love or kindness. Are these allpart of spirituality? The editors of this book could have

a problem dealing with a subject whichcannot be accurately described by itstitle. How do they resolve it? First bydividing it into three parts – conceptsof spirituality – personal spirituality –spirituality and leadership.The book has been carefully

assembled. Good writers add theirchapters under one of the three sub-titles. The editors as well as theauthors bring in spirituality when theycan although the thrust of the writingis to do with values, ethics, andcorporate responsibility rather thanspirituality, except in the very widestsense. There is frequent mention ofyoga practices and meditation. Therehas been very considerable growth inEurope and North America of suchpractices over recent decades andmany find them of great importanceas they contemplate their inner lives.But it is not yet evident thatcorporations think they arefundamental to business.The editors attempt to widen the

texts from Western to some Easterntraditions with articles based onIndian (presumably Hindu) andBuddhist experience. There is moreanalysis of the effect of religion orspirituality from these sources thanin the articles written from a Westernperspective. Judaic, Muslim, Christianteachings of spirituality, morality orvalues are not included. It is notevident that spirituality is part ofHindu or Buddhist corporations. Yes,Hindus may be more involved in theirpersonal lives in matters spiritual

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62 Network Review Summer 2010book reviews when working in businesses, but do

Indian companies build theirbusinesses with an integratedspiritual dimension any more than doWestern European ones? Or is it justthat they understand the personalspiritual dimension of theiremployees in the same way asMuslim employees would expect andare allowed time for prayer duringoffice hours?Authors cite Maslow and his famous

Hierarchy of Needs as a starting pointand then move into ethics, happinessand values. The growth of soft asopposed to hard disciplines ofbusiness has begun to effectcompanies mainly through the humanresources function of corporations, butwhere can one see spirituality as asubject specifically introduced intoorganisations? The word spirituality isnot found in the annual reports ofmajor companies nor of governmentdepartments for that matter‘Love is an essential aspect of

management’ (page 64), - maybe, butwhat about spirituality? Businessethics are discussed (p73) and howthis led to the stakeholder theory ofthe firm (p75). ‘It is time to give wisdom its

proper place in business educationand business schools.’ - yes, butdoes wisdom mean spirituality?Spirituality and the transpersonal ismentioned (p87) and the need toenhance self development toward amore holistic and peaceful state ofconsciousnessThe Indian perspective (p93) and

karma as a concept is discussed, butno evidence that karma is part ofbusiness any more than self masterycourses which are mentioned a fewpages later. Valiant attempts such asthe AWARE programme of Shell are ofinterest although the word spiritualityis not part of this programme. APEX -achieving personal excellence and themeditation silence service are coveredas is Integral TransformationalCoaching and the concept ofmindfulness. Buddhist practices aredescribed. Perhaps the word‘spirituality’ will come to be acceptedand used by business in the futurejust as ‘meditation’ and ‘mindfulness’have come into common parlance.200 US hospitals have introducedmindfulness and some Googlepersonnel follow courses in itsupported by their company.Words such as soul or spirit are

not in common use in business.There is perhaps the personalspirituality of some business leaders- another subject - and of coursethere is widespread development ofcoaching in companies and concernabout work-life balance. But businesscoaches would run away from theword spirituality. Interestingly,

business is not so worried aboutecology as a word and a growingnumber of companies see theconcept very tied in theoretically andpractically with their businessdevelopment. Many would see thatecology has a spiritual dimension,but the ’S’ word has not yet comeinto business language.‘Further research is needed to

convince businesses and leadersthat spirituality as conveyed in thiswork is a key to answering many ofthe challenges they face’ is aconclusion of the editors. (p. 247).Why would research necessarilyconvince leaders of the need forspirituality and that it is the answerto many of the challenges they face?Some might hope for this, butresearch should be independent andthere is no evidence offered here thatbusiness leaders would or should beconvinced. The book is a valuable contribution

to the discussion of the role of ethicalvalues in business and managementand as such is to be welcomed. Itdoes not prove that managers inbusiness are concerned withspirituality or that there is a growinginterest in the concept. It could bethat the US is more concerned than isWestern Europe. It could be that manyparts of the world from Muslim toHindu to Buddhist regions haveemployees who are more spiritual, butthat is because they come from morespiritual cultures. ‘This book invitesfuture development in the burgeoningfield of Business Spirituality’ - the lastline by the editors of ‘Spirituality andBusiness.’ And so say many of us.But is it a burgeoning field or is it anattempt to include values, ethics, andmorality in the wider term‘spirituality’? Many might wish thatbusinesses were more ethically basedand indeed say so, but suggestingthat spirituality is the way ahead istoo far in advance of the main streamof companies and their employees A book such as this shows the

efforts that are being made todevelop more caring organizations.We can only hope that more books inthe future will be written on thesubject of Business and Spiritualityand that some will be written bybusiness people who believe and canprove that businesses run in aspiritual way can profit allstakeholders. They are not yetwritten, but to times in hope?

John Drew is Jean Monnet Professorof European Business and

Management at the EuropeanBusiness School London, Regent’sCollege and a former President of

EUROTAS, the EuropeanTranspersonal Association

Seeing DifferentlyDavid Lorimer

GREENSPIRIT – PATH TOA NEW CONSCIOUSNESSEdited by Marian Van EykMcCainO Books, 2010, 282 pp., £11.99, p/b– ISBN 978 1 84694 290 7

‘The Miracle is not to walk on water.The miracle is to walk on the greenEarth, dwelling deeply in the presentmoment and feeling truly alive.’ Thisquotation from Thich Nhat Hanhreminds us that our very existence ismiraculous but we do not oftenrealise this because we get stuck inour normal perception of reality. And itis this perception, on a large scale,that constitutes an element of ourworldview. Philip Sherrard reminds usthat our image of the human and ofthe world correspond: if we see theworld in a dehumanised, mechanisticfashion, then we will understandourselves in a similar way and behaveaccordingly. The need for a newworldview is a refrain of this Review,of the Network as a whole and of ourNew Renaissance volume inparticular. This book contains multipleperspectives on green spirituality as akey to 21st century consciousnessand is appropriately introduced bySatish Kumar, whose meditation andprayer is walking in Nature, drawinglessons of transformation and deepconnectedness to the sacred throughNature. The editor shares this

understanding, recounting her ownfirst experience of skiving fromchurch and spending Sunday morningsitting under a tree; being of theEarth rather than just on it.GreenSpirit is a network ofindividuals who believe that humanlife has both an ecological and aspiritual dimension, with a vision

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bringing together ‘the rigour ofscience, the creativity of artisticexpression, the passion for socialjustice and the core wisdom ofspiritual traditions.’ It draws on anumber of strands and thinkersrepresenting Cosmology (ThomasBerry, Brian Swimme), CreationSpirituality (Matthew Fox), DeepEcology (Arne Naess), Gaia Theory(James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis andStephan Harding) and Ecopsychology(Theodore Roszak). The four partscover understanding ourselves,spiritual pathways, greening ourculture and walking our talk. Essaysvary from a couple of pages to 20. Brian Swimme reminds us that the

universe is not just a place, but adevelopment, a story, an unfoldingprocess of which we are all a part.He adds, as a poignant reminder, that‘because you are aware of the limitsof life, you are compelled to bringforth what is within you; this is theonly time you have to show yourself.You can’t hold back or hide in acave....the drama of the Cosmic storywon’t allow it. The supremeinsistence of life is that you enter theadventure of creating yourself.’ Thispassage is quoted in the context ofan explanation of Fox’s four ways, thevia positiva, via negativa, via creativaand via transformativa. The last isour imperative, embracing justice,compassion and wisdom and movingfrom tourist to pilgrim, observer toparticipant, consumer to partaker,from master to co-creator. Thesection on spiritual pathwaysincludes Christianity, Buddhism,Judaism, Sufism and Paganism. The third part on greening our

culture addresses health, education,economics, the law and agriculture.Each is currently imbued with amechanistic or utilitarian view thatprioritises analysis over intuition andcreativity, the left over the righthemisphere and neglects theimportance of the body. As MatthewFox states, echoing David Orr: ‘if youhave only educated the left side ofyour brain, you are a dangerousperson.’ David Korten writes aboutliving economies and draws outlessons from life in terms of self-organisation, adaptation to place,permeable borders, sharing, diversityand creativity. I liked his phrase‘mindful markets’ and his aspirationto create economies that nurtureslife and restores money to its rightfulplace. The final part on walking the talk

gives more detail about GreenSpirititself and its activities. There aremeetings and retreats of variouskinds, publications, pilgrimages andeducational work. After readingcomes living; and we are livingthrough a major transition involving a

degree of breakdown and/orbreakthrough. The editor leaves uswith some useful guidance receivednearly 20 years ago from the Basqueshaman and cultural anthropologistAngeles Arrien. She discovered fourarchetypal patterns and paths:

� The Way of the Warrior – showup, choose to be present

� The Way of the Healer – payattention to what has heart andmeaning

� The Way of the Visionary – tellthe truth without blame orjudgement

� The Way of the Teacher – beopen, rather than attached, tothe outcome

Good advice in any event.

generalA Controlled DemolitionDavid Lorimer

THE MYSTERIOUSCOLLAPSE OF WORLDTRADE CENTER 7David Ray GriffinArris Books, 2010, 328 pp., £12.99,p/b – ISBN 978 1 84437 083 2

Over the last few years I havereviewed all of David Ray Griffin’sbooks on 9/11, which now amount toover 2,500 pages of close analysis.For readers not familiar with hisearlier work, a reminder that he wasbest known as a philosopher ofreligion and process theologian, andhas published over 25 books in thisfield. He was asked to write anarticle on 9/11 and began with theorthodox story; the more he delvedinto it, the less plausible did theseofficial explanations seem, and theresult was his 2004 book The NewPearl Harbour. Since then he hasproduced analyses of theshortcomings of the 9/11

Commission report and a bookspecifically responding to 9/11debunkers. Many uninformed peopleare under the impression that so-called 9/11 conspiracy theorists areunhinged and have no rational basisfor their views. This could not befurther from the truth, but in order torealise this for oneself, one doesneed to plough through some detailas set out in Griffin’s books in orderto appreciate the full force of hisarguments in relation to theevidence. This latest book on the collapse of

WTC 7 is subtitled ‘why the finalofficial report about 9/11 isunscientific and false’. This soundslike an extraordinary claim, but Griffinamply proves his case by means offorensic analysis of the evidence.Many readers will have seen videosof the collapse of WTC on theInternet. If you have not done so, Irecommend you stop reading nowand have a look for yourself. You willnotice that the building collapses onits own footprint at more or less freefall speed. It has all the features of acontrolled demolition, which asattested by many demolition experts.And yet this most plausiblehypothesis was ruled out by NIST(National Institute of Standards andTechnology) in its official report,where they claim, incredibly, that theyfound no evidence for it! Griffinconducts a systematic controlleddemolition of the official report,showing conclusively how itunscientifically rejects the most likelytheory and then advancesunscientific arguments for its owntheory of fire causing the collapse.The main problem is that theirconclusions were politically set inadvance, so the report is effectively apolitical document rather than animpartial scientific investigation. NISTwas asked how it was that thebuilding collapsed as a result of fireswhen fires have never brought aboutthe collapse of a comparablestructure, either before or since. According to the 9/11 truth

movement, the attacks were in fact a‘false flag’ operation ‘in whichevidence is planted to implicate thegroups or countries the actualperpetrators wish to attack.’Moreover, the official account of theattacks, when subject to close criticalscrutiny, can be shown to be false.Griffin has established this case inhis earlier books. Unlike the TwinTowers, the 47-story WTC 7 was nothit by a plane, and, if it came downas a result of fire, this would beunprecedented. So how and why didit collapse? This is the ‘mystery’.Griffin enumerates key similaritiesbetween the collapse of WTC 7 andthe features of controlled demolition

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The gentleman who wrote theShakespeare material was anEarl whose family’s crest bore theimage of a lion shaking a spear.To honour his family he wassometimes toasted at Court withthe phrase, ‘Your countenanceshakes a spear!’ But this Earlwas forbidden by Queen Elizabeththe First, who was a politicalgenius and very controlling, fromputting his name on his work.There was a social stigmaattached to the stage at thattime. Plays, especially comedies,were not considered to beserious literature and werebeneath the dignity of royalty. Itturns out there was an actor bythe name of William Shake -speare. When Edward de Vere,the seventeenth Earl of Oxford,found out about this man, hethought it was almost too good tobe true. Here was de Vere beingtoasted at Court with the phraserelated to his family crest, a lionshaking a spear, and here’s aman in the business namedShakespeare! Edward struck adeal with William to put his nameon the work and have the playspresented to the public with theactor playing the part of author. Itwas a sly way for Edward to getsome credit for his work withoutactually putting his name on it.The plan succeeded very nicely,although Shakespeare wasn’treally paid that much, and manyof the plays were published all atonce as a catalog after the actornamed Shakespeare passedaway. (End of quotation)What you have just read is a ‘clear

vision’ given to Gary Renard by anascended master in 1997, asreported in Renard’s book ‘D.U.’,published in 2003, i.e., five yearsbefore Roper’s Proving Shakespeare.In his book Roper presentsscholarly, definitive, convincingevidence that E De Vere, Earl ofOxford, was the man hiding withpseudonym ‘William Shakespeare’behind an actor conveniently calledWill Shaxspere, from Stratford-upon-Avon, to act as author of his work. I learned about Roper’s book via a

review in the Fall 2009 issue of theJournal of Scientific Exploration. Ithen sent him the passage quotedabove from Renard’s book. Hisresponse: I was most intrigued to discoverthat Gary Renard had publishedan almost identical account tomy own, describing how thename Shakespeare came intoexistence. As far as I was aware,no one but I had drawn thisconclusion, and I am familiar withmost literature on this subject.

domestic terrorists with the ability toplant explosives and orchestrate acover-up, of which the NIST reportitself is a significant component. Anappendix puts forward the furtherhypothesis based on evidence thatexplosions at the bottom of thebuilding began at 9.30 a.m. (thebuilding came down in the lateafternoon) that it was meant to havecome down at 10.45, in which casethe subsequent evidence forcontrolled demolition would havebeen obscured. This is arguably the most important

of Griffin’s books since it deals with abuilding that was not struck by aplane and therefore requires adifferent hypothesis to explain itscollapse (although there is also goodevidence that the Twin Towers camedown through explosions). Theimplications of his conclusions arefar-reaching since the US politicalauthorities have systematicallymisled the public about the causesof 9/11, which have been a criticalplank for subsequent foreign policydecisions, which had been outlined ayear previously in Project for a NewAmerican Century. All that wasneeded to get the public behind thisagenda was a ‘New Pearl Harbour’ inthe guise of 9/11. Griffin has had tofill the role of the investigativejournalist and has shown immensecourage and stamina in perseveringwith his work over the last sevenyears. The book is essential readingfor anyone who wants to get to gripswith the reasons behind thismomentous event and the ways inwhich official explanations can beproved to be totally unconvincing andinadequate, a triumph of politicalexpediency over scientific integrity.

Prophecy and Free WillKurt Dressler

PROVING SHAKESPEAREDavid L Roper

Orvid Publications, 2008, 534 pp.,£37.50, h/b -ISBN 978 0 557 01261 9

NOSTRADAMUS – THETRUTH Five Centuries ofProphecies ValidatedDavid L RoperOrvid Editions, 2009, 587 pp.,£21.23, p/b –ISBN 978 0 9543873 1 0

Why has the book on the trueidentity of Shakespeare caught myattention? In Network 99 (Spring2009) I had reviewed ‘D.U.’, TheDisappearance of the Universe, byGary Renard. I quote (pp.330-331)from Renard’s book:

through implosion: the collapsestarted from the bottom andsuddenly; the building came downtotally, leaving none of its steelcolumns intact; it came straightdown, symmetrically; it came down infree fall or close to it; the concretewas pulverised into tiny particles, andthe debris ended up in a relativelysmall, compact pile. Given thesefeatures, it is completely implausiblethat WTC 7 could have come down inthis way without the aid ofexplosives. The NIST spokesmanShyam Sunder nevertheless brazenlymaintained that ‘we did not find anyevidence that explosives were usedto bring the building down.’ Why did they find no such

evidence? Griffin explains in detailhow NIST ignored all physical andtestimonial evidence supporting theimplosion hypothesis, includingtestimonies of explosions frompeople both inside and outside thebuilding. They distorted the evidenceof two city officials inside thebuilding, one of whom subsequentlychanged his story to fit in with theofficial explanation, a distortionuncritically repeated in a BBCdocumentary, as Griffin shows. NISTalso ignored evidence that somesenior members of the New York FireDepartment knew in advance that thebuilding was going to come down.Finally, expert testimony that WTC 7was brought down by explosives wasalso dismissed. They misleadinglyclaim that the explosion hypothesishad been ‘carefully investigated’,adding that NIST had ‘found noevidence supporting the existence ofa blast event’. One can onlycomment that Nelson ‘saw no ships’at the Battle of Copenhagen when heput a telescope to his blind eye. The second part examines the

alternative NIST theory that WTC 7was brought down by ordinary fireson a few floors, the temperature ofwhich could not even have reachedthe necessary heat to melt thebuilding’s steel columns. Griffinanalyses the main components of theNIST thermal expansion fire theoryand finds them all inadequate,especially how a single failed columncan lead to a total and near free-fallcollapse leaving not a single columnstanding. More significantly, heshows how the report itself is notonly unscientific but actually containsfabrication and falsification ofevidence on at least 20 separatecounts. The falsity of the report’sconclusion follows from theoverwhelming likelihood, given theavailable evidence, the WTC 7 wasbrought down by controlleddemolition. If this is the case, thenthis building was not brought down byMuslim terrorists but rather by

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Network Review Summer 2010 65

carefully worded his prophecies suchthat, although they can quite clearlybe identified with past events, theycan not accurately be assigned tofuture dates or places in advance.That renders it impossible to changethe course of predetermined eventsand it thus guarantees free will.Furthermore, our experience of theflow of time and of separationbetween past, present and future isa product of our normal state ofconsciousness. The entire outerworld of matter, space and time isgenerated by our consciousness. Itis not matter that generates anillusion of consciousness, butconsciousness that generates anillusion of matter and of spatial andtemporal separations (read again myreview of Gary Renard’s books). Renard is told by an ascended

master: ‘Don’t take the tricks of timeseriously. What you think of as thepast is an illusory happening that istaking place right now. The future ishappening right now, but your mindhas divided these images up to makethem look like time. Yet the wholething happened all at once and isalready over.’ Within this worldviewthere is a knowledge who knowseverything. In heaven, the future isalready present. It is us who believethat the future is still open. Ropercalls this a block universe whichcontains it all, past, future, the wholeworks. It is us who move through thisblock universe with the illusion of anopen future. And yet we really do havefree will, except that what my free willis going to decide tomorrow is knownalready today to the Knowledge whoknows all. Roper calls this KnowledgeGod and he suggests that theexistence of accurate prophecies canbe taken as a proof of an all-knowingGod. If you don’t like that you stillmust acknowledge the existence of abody of information about eventswhich for us lie in the future, i.e.,information that is apparentlyaccessible to ascended masters aswell as to earth bound people withaccess to prophetic vision like, some450 years ago, that French physicianMichel de Nostredame.It is reasonable to expect the

prophecies of Nostradamuscontinuing to reveal major events inthe world on a regular basis. Theimplications are therefore profound,and these will be a major source ofcontention for very many years tocome.

Kurt Dressler is a physicist, formerprofessor and dean of graduateprograms at the Swiss Federal

Institute of Technology, ETH Zurich,and former member of SMN Council

(www.scimednet.org),www.kurtdressler.ch

major area of research at the LHC.Roper’s comment at the end of hiswebsite: Because of the similarities thatexist between what Nostradamuspredicted for Geneva and theactivities intended for the LHC,also at Geneva, it is faircomment and a matter of publicinterest to draw attention to therelevant similarities that exist.That urgent call to leave Geneva

before it becomes exterminated iscertainly an unwelcome message andone that is unlikely to be takenseriously there. So we are left tohelplessly stand by and observe thefuture inevitable course ofpredetermined history or, if not, thenwonder why in this first instance in450 years, the predicted calamityrefuses to happen. Roper’s book presents some 200

prophecies, out of a total of 945published by Nostradamus 1555 -1558. Those 200 cover the periodfrom 1557 to 2009, while theremainder was said by Nostradamusto extend as far as the year 3797.The 200 represent an impressivelycomplete record of the majorhistorical events in the history ofFrance and beyond, including suchrecent examples as 9/11, the war inIraq, and the prediction that greatclarity will come in our timesconcerning the meaning ofNostradamus’ work. Roper has enriched his

Nostradamus book with an Afterwordin which he presents a carefulanalysis of the apparent conflictbetween predetermination of futureevents in prophetic revelations, onthe one hand, and free will thatmight be exercised to prevent thepredicted events from happening, onthe other hand. Nostradamus has

Roper’s is undoubtedly the mostthorough, scholarly and definitivestudy of de Vere as author of theShakespeare material. He uses andinterprets numerous documents ofthe period and he breaks a codewhich was hidden in a text on ahistoric plaque by people who knewShakespeare’s true identity. ProvingShakespeare is a most impressiveand fascinating piece of work.Now to Nostradamus: Roper

informed me about this book prior toits publication. He wrote: … upon reading your review [ofRenard’s two books], I found thatyou were repeating so much thatI am already familiar with, andwhich I have put into the finalchapter, the Afterword, of my newbook, which is published nextmonth. With regard to this book,were you to follow through all thelinks concerning this publication,which are to be found on mywebsite, there is one in particularconcerning a quite devastatingfuture for those living in Geneva.I do not think bad news such asthis can ever be welcome, but inmy defence, I can only say thatmy interpretations have neverfailed in the past. (end ofquotation). The relevant links in Roper’s

website www.davidroper.eu are:Nostradamus The Truth /www.nostradamus.org.uk / A LookInto the Future [1]This leads you to the followingprophecy (in its original ancientFrench as well as) in modern Englishtranslation: Migrate, migrate from Geneva,absolutely everyone!

Saturn will change itself: made ofgold out of iron,

The opposite positive beam willexterminate all:

Before the violent issue, theheavens will give signs.

The website explains that this mustbe understood as a reference to thepresently ongoing experiments inCERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) inwhich positively charged atomic nucleiare brought into violent collisions witha positive beam of nuclei travelling inthe opposite direction. A strange formof matter is thus created, a so calledquark-gluon plasma, which requiressuch immense energies that the likesof it haven’t existed since the firstinstants of the Big Bang. In 2000,CERN announced compelling evidencethat this exotic form of matter hadfinally been created by colliding highenergy lead ions into gold and leadtargets. The discovery was confirmedin 2005 elsewhere and will be a

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books in briefDavid Lorimer

SCIENCE/PHILOSOPHY OFSCIENCE

Creation and Evolutionby Lenn E GoodmanTaylor & Francis 2010, 222 pp., £21.99, p/b.A thorough and stimulating analysis of the relationshipbetween Darwinism and Religion. As a professor ofphilosophy who is also religious, Goodman brings abalanced but searching critique of arguments on varioussides, asking a number of central questions about religiousopposition to Darwinism, the way in which the biblicalcreation narrative should be read, the evidence for evolutionby natural selection, contemporary objections to evolutionand how evolution can complement theism. The booksurveys the backgrounds of today’s conflict and offers athematic treatment of the Biblical creation story as acritique of literalism. It then articulates the history of thecase for evolution before considering three lines of critiquefrom Darwin’s contemporary Sedgwick, Popper andIntelligent Design. Goodman does not believe that themethodological naturalism of science implies an ontologicalnaturalism, criticising the likes of Dennett on that score. Hehimself proposes that God works in and through nature andthat value is endemic in nature; also that natural selectiondoes not eliminate teleology, which he sees as presumed inDarwin’s concept of adaptation. This results in a morenuanced understanding of this contested field.

Les Racines Physiques de l’Espritby Tom Atham & Emmanuel Ransford (SMN)Editions Quintessence 2009, 149 pp., £14.50, p/b.This is a serious attempt to create a new model of scienceand consciousness, using a number of fertile new concepts,which are explained in the course of the book. The structureentails a preface by Emmanuel Ransford followed by a seriesof chapters from Tom Atham about Ransford’s scheme anda concluding observation by Ransford. A key idea is that ofpsychomatter as a result of the search for the causalprinciple within the heart of matter itself. The reader isreminded of Penrose and others who state that no theory ofeverything that ignores consciousness can possibly beadequate. The book elaborates a new ladder of causality,beginning with what is called exo-causality, associated withthe external deterministic factors such as gravity. The nextlevel is exo-a (aleatoire), signifying determinism and chance;then we have endo-causality to which psychomattercorresponds, and finally a combination of all four, wherephysics abuts onto metaphysics. This in turn corresponds to four forms of medicine along

the lines elaborated by Larry Dossey; and again to thestructure of the self as it becomes more universal, movingfrom what is called ‘supral’ (connected to the whole) throughto the total self, where we are linked to the whole universein its invisible and essential depths. The final picture is arich one of sharing, unity, interdependence and abundance.Instead of being complete only in a physical sense, our worldand our lives are seen to open up to a transcendence thatis both an extension and a ground, or, to use another

expression, a cosmic supral canvas which harmonises andenvelopes everything in a parallel fashion to quantumentanglement. One gap in the analysis was the distinctionbetween life and death as two forms of matter, thesubstance of which is identical, but in the latter case thepsycho part seems to have been removed elsewhere. A verystimulating treatise for those whose French is up to it.

The Man who Tapped the Secrets of the Universeby Glenn ClarkFiliquarian Publishing 2010, 68 pp., £6.99, p/b.An introductory book about Walter Russell (1871-1963), alittle-known genius who published a series of books onscience and philosophy following a prolonged and mysticalexperience in 1921. When his book The Universal One waspublished in 1926, Russell sent it to 850 leading thinkers,and received not a single reply. His approach is still aheadof its time, and this book provides a fascinating introductionto his life and work. As well as his writing, Russell was aprominent sculptor, painter, architect and musician, as wellas an accomplished horseman and skater. The key tounderstanding his work is the way in which he tapped intothe light and energy of the universal mind and livedaccording to universal principles. He states that all is OneMind, that men do not have separate minds and that allknowledge can be obtained from the universal source bybecoming one with that source. One must not be the part,one must be the whole. A truly inspiring account.

The Artificial Apeby Timothy TaylorPalgrave Macmillan 2010, 236 pp., £17.00, p/b.An intriguing book arguing that humans took control of theirown evolution at a much earlier stage than is currentlysupposed by means of the invention of tools, fire and shelteras a way of modifying their biology. The author posits threesystems within which we live: physics and inorganicchemistry, biology and technology. He contests Darwin’s viewand that of creationism equally, using the telling phrase‘survival of the weakest’. Without artificial aids we would nothave made it; technology supersedes biology, although I wasnot convinced by the one-way nature of technology drivingevolution - it is surely a reciprocal process. We have beenconstructing artificial environments now informing ourselvesin artificial images for thousands of years, so there is nogoing back to nature since we are both product andproducers of this third system of artificiality.

Seen/Unseenby Martin KempOxford University Press 2006, 352 pp., £25.00, h/b.A book of extraordinary scope and erudition subtitled ‘Art,science and intuition from Leonardo to the Hubble telescope.’Martin Kemp is Professor of History of Art at Oxford with along-standing interest in the interface between art andscience, especially in relation to visual perception and thestructural intuitions connecting these two fields. This leads totopics such as the way we visualise space, the relationshipbetween wholes and parts, the generation of forms in natureand the mathematics of complexity represented in fractals. He

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begins with Renaissance techniques for representingperspectival space and moves through a number of exemplarsincluding the architecture of Copernican astronomy, thediagrams of Kepler, the contemplative science of Goethe andD’Arcy Thompson’s Growth and Form (Kemp and D’Arcy wereboth professors at St Andrews). Throughout the book,illustrations form part of the exposition and enrich thenarrative. The Unseen part of the title refers to the way inwhich we image cellular and subatomic worlds. The book is averitable tour de force and elegantly written besides. Essentialreading for anyone interested in the art-science interface andwho wants to explore more deeply the dominance of visualperception in our culture.

From Galileo to Gell-Mannby Marco Bersanelli & Mario GargantiniTempleton Foundation Press 2009, 320 pp., $27.95, h/b.A beautifully produced book about the wonder that inspiredthe greatest scientists of all time, drawing on the writings ofover 100 people. The authors have done a great service inbringing all this material together, sometimes from obscuresources. They group the writings, accompanied by aninterconnecting commentary, under seven major headings:wonder, observation, experiment, discovery, certainty, signand purpose. Each of these in turn is explored in relation toparticular themes such as wonder and beauty, experimentand attention, certainty and limits, purpose andresponsibility. The book is literally a goldmine of reflectionsand insights and can be opened at more or less any page orread more systematically.

MEDICINE/HEALTH

Obesity: The Biographyby Sander L GilmanOxford University Press 2010, 214 pp., £12.99, h/b.A timely book in view of current preoccupations withglobesity, although it is somewhat ironic that it appears in aseries of volumes on the biography of diseases, whenobesity is not in fact a disease. The author is an authorityon the social and cultural history of the body, and is able totrace the history of obesity from ancient Greeks to thepresent, showing how cultural interpretations have changedbut the pattern of therapeutic interventions has remainedrelatively constant in taking either a psychological orphysiological approach. There is an interesting section in themiddle of the book about the influence of the 16th centuryItalian Luigi Cornaro, who suffered from a variety of ailmentsdue to overindulgence until his middle age but cured himselfby a strict regime that enabled him to live healthily until theage of 98. Coming to the present, the discussion in the finalchapter includes a critical reference to Weston Price and histheory of nutrition and physical degeneration. Thediscussion of organic food reflects the author’s prejudice,although I do agree that those who eat organically are notnecessarily better people as such! And the role of giant foodcompanies in helping create widespread obesity is notreferred to except obliquely in a reference to the ChinaStudy showing that the transition to a Western diet bringswith it a tendency towards overweight and the advent ofdiseases of civilisation. There is also no reference to thework of Sir Robert McCarrison.

PHILOSOPHY/RELIGIONNaked Beingby J M HarrisonO Books 2010, 136 pp., £9.99, p/b.A series of 450 reflections about mind, life andconsciousness from a non-dual perspective. A few extractscan convey the sense: ‘life is seen by the habitual mind to bediverse and many, but realised by pure mind to be ONE.’ ‘Theego self thrives on separation that seeks to be whole. Puremind doesn’t seek and can never be divided.’ ‘Naked Being isthe one Self, which is ‘something we seek and yet somethingwe already are.’ It is also an essential dimension to life thatwe all share. I was struck by the quotation from Aristotle that‘the energy of the mind is the essence of life.’ Each of theseaphorisms is a reflection of the One, providing an insight froma slightly different angle but which, paradoxically, cannot befully understood by the analytical mind. A book that needs tobe tasted and savoured. See www.wholenessofbeing.com

Reasonable Faithby John HaldaneRoutledge - Taylor & Francis Group 2010, 200 pp., £22.99, p/b.This book of essays follows up John Haldane’s earlier volumeFaithful Reason and falls into two parts, the first one reason,faith and God, and the second one reason, faith and the soul.Haldane is well-known as a Catholic philosopher of widesympathies and vision, qualities which are apparentthroughout these essays. Taking up the wager theme fromPascal, he uses this to discuss Nicholas Rescher’scontributions to philosophy of religion which engage practicallywith the meaning of human existence, a topic studiouslyavoided by many contemporaries who shy away from practicalapplications of philosophy. In this same essay, Thomas Nagelis quoted as being uneasy that some of the most intelligentand well-informed people he knows our religious believers,while he positively hopes that there is no God. Reschercomments tellingly: ‘Many people feel threatened by a beliefthat God might exist, because they feel that, were it so, Godmight not approve of them.’ Another essay on the very idea ofspiritual values discusses the contribution of the Frenchscholar Pierre Hadot to our understanding of ancient schoolsof philosophy as a means of forming the soul. Haldane doesnot believe that spiritual formation should proceedindependently of the truth of the accompanying metaphysicaldiscourse. Rather, believers and materialists alike should askthemselves what follows from arriving at their ownunderstanding of a fundamental view of reality.There are two essays on death and immortality, one of

which is entitled ‘The examined death’ and discusses thenature of human embodiment and arguments for animmaterial soul. While definitions of death necessarily referto the cessation of bodily functions, it does not follow, asHaldane implies, that one cannot experience one’s owndeath as an experience. This is exactly what is reported inNDEs. From a philosophical point of view, the question ofwho is experiencing is only a problem if one insists on anidentity coterminous with physical embodiment. In anotherpart of the essay, Haldane observes that the ancientsdefined the immaterial not as consciousness but asabstract thought. On this view, abstract thought mightpersist in a post mortem states. As is often the case, thedifficulty arises with the notion of an immaterial self beingdisembodied, while the evidence suggests that there aredifferent forms of body according to the constitution of thattype of existence. It is here that human experience in theseliminal states can help shed light on philosophical matters.But such is the modern aversion to dualism that theseconsiderations are seldom mentioned. Having said this, theessay is no less stimulating on that account.

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What is This Thing Called Happiness?by Fred FeldmanOxford University Press 2010, 286 pp., £27.50, h/b.A major philosophical study of the nature and value ofhappiness. The first part is a critique of prevalent theoriesincluding what is called sensory hedonism, preferentism andlife satisfaction. The second part is devoted to an expositionand defence of his own position, which he calls intrinsicattitudinal hedonism, by which he means that attitudinalpleasure is a propositional attitude representing a capacityto take pleasure in things and experiences. At the sametime, the book seeks to clarify the various meanings andusages of terms within positive psychology. Althoughtechnical, the book is accessible to a persistent generalreader.

The Philosopher’s Toolkitby Julian Baggini and Peter S FoslBlackwell Publishing 2010, 284 pp., £11.99, p/b.Second edition of this highly informative compendium ofphilosophical concepts and methods introducing theconceptual toolkit required by any systematic thinker. As oneof the reviews points out, the book is ideal for introductorycourses in philosophy as well as for anyone interested inmethods of argument, criticism and assessment. As such, itcan also be used by IB students as a way into their theoryof knowledge paper. There are nearly 100 sections dividedinto a number of tools for argument, assessment,conceptual distinctions and radical critique along with toolsof historical schools and philosophers, which includesHume’s Fork and Occam’s Razor. Each of the entries iscross-referenced with a short reading list at the end. It is anideal way of getting to grips with important philosophicaldistinctions and concepts such as necessary/sufficient,circularity, false dichotomy and genetic fallacy, not tomention an entertaining introduction to logic and the validityof arguments.

Unveiling the Breathby Donna Kennedy GlansPari Publishing 2009, 183 pp., £9.99, p/b.An important book giving new insights into gender relations,especially with respect to the Islamic countries (Yemen inparticular) where the author has worked. The emphasis is onWestern people reframing their own ideas about gender rolesas part of an ongoing dialogue with traditional cultures. Shepresents the idea of a gender onion with different layers - therelationship between the individual and family forming theinmost layer, while outer layers deal with the individual andfaith, community, work and the world. More subtly, the task isto integrate the masculine and feminine aspects of ourselvesand to incorporate this more generally in education.Interested readers can consult www.canadabridges.com

Ancient Egypt 39,000 BCEby Edward F MalkowskiBear & Company Publishing 2010, 299 pp., $24.00, p/b.Subtitled ‘the history, technology and philosophy ofCivilisation X’, this is a groundbreaking study making astrong case for the existence of much more sophisticatedtechnology than is currently acknowledged to have beeninvolved in building the pyramids. It is sobering to reflect onhow little would be left of our civilisation if we wereovertaken by the kind of catastrophe that has occurredduring the earth’s history. The book’s argument hinges onthe discovery of an extraordinary stone at Abu Rawash whichshows signs of having been machine tooled. The sheer scaleand precision of the technology involved suggests to theauthor that a technically advanced civilisation existed in theremote past, which had the skills and power to quarry, move

and dress multi-ton blocks of stones and had the technologyto cut and shape granite into beautiful temples. A wealth ofevidence is provided to support this proposition, along withan explanation of the cataclysm which seems to have wipedit out, based on the work of Paul LaViolette. This is a seriouspiece of work which deserves careful consideration.

The Mysteries of the Holy Grailby Rudolf SteinerRudolf Steiner Press 2010, 217 pp., £12.99, p/b.This volume collects together for the first time a variedselection of teachings relating to the Grail, Arthur andParzival to modern initiation. The editor suggests that theGrail represents a state towards which we are evolvingparallel to the impulse of the Christ within. Just as thehero’s journey involves engaging with the veils of materialillusion and the valleys of shadow and doubt, so Steinerpresents a challenging path, inviting us to embark on ourown journey so as to become vessels of the spirit.

There Were Giants Upon the Earthby Zecharia SitchinBear & Company Publishing 2010, 346 pp., $24.00, h/b.The latest in a series of books by Sitchin, who is now in his90th year. He continues his theme that the gods of Sumerand Babylon - the Annunaki from another planet Nibiru -genetically engineered humans to those of an existinghominid some 300,000 years ago. Drawing on a vast rangeof scholarship as well has his grasp of ancient languagesand archaeology, he asserts that two of the tombs of Urcontained the remains of an Annunaki goddess Puabi, whichactually still exist in the Natural History Museum. Sitchinhas been urging the museum to do a DNA test on theseremains in order to assess his hypothesis. So far, hisrequests have been politely refused, and the intent of thebook is to provide sufficient evidence to justify this request.It is an intriguing story.

In the Name of Godby John TeehanBlackwell Publishing 2010, 272 pp., £14.99, p/b.Subtitled ‘the evolutionary origins of religious ethics andviolence’, this fascinating study argues that religiousviolence is grounded in the moral psychology of religion,which can be accounted for through evolutionary psychology.Adopting an approach of methodological naturalism, theauthor argues that evolution has ‘designed’ the human mindwith a set of mental tools that shape our morality is thatreligions. Accordingly, his first chapter is devoted to theevolution of the moral brain with five layers: kin selection,reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, cultural groupselection and moral emotions, all leading to the emergenceof moral grammar and moral systems. Moving on to moralreligions, he applies his analysis to the 10 Commandmentsin Judaism and the morality of Jesus in the New Testament.He argues against the view that Christianity has developedbeyond reciprocal altruism by pointing out that there is areward for turning the other cheek, but from God rather thananother person. He contends, rightly in my view, thatreligions are both peaceloving and violent on the basis thatthey always constitute an in-group and an out-group, hence‘the tragic flaw in religious moral psychology begins bydrawing a boundary around the group, setting it apart fromthe other.’ This both creates a sense of communal identitywhile at the same time creating a limit of moral obligation,thus setting up the conditions for religious violence. In hisconclusion, the author offers an inclusive vision ofhumanism which he hopes will resolve this contradiction,even though he admits that the new atheists perpetuate thedistinction between an in-group and an out-group.

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The Imaginal Cosmosedited by Angela Voss (SMN)University of Kent 2007, 158 pp., p/b.

Subtitled ‘astrology, divination and the sacred’, this is aseries of papers presented at an international conference in2004, and include leading scholars in psychology,esotericism, the history and theory of astrology, mediaevalphilosophy and religious studies. Not so long ago, it wouldhave been inconceivable for an academic meeting ondivination to be held at a University. As the title suggests,many papers focus on the prominent role all the creativeimagination as the organ of symbolic insight, and locatedivination in the mundus imaginalis. Of central concern isthe mode of knowing implied in divination and one’scorresponding understanding of the cosmos. Our currentmechanistic understanding is only one mode, then oneshould not forget ‘the older analogical view of nature with itsalternative vision of order in terms of influences, sympathiesand correspondences, implied, incidentally, in Jung’sconcept of synchronicity. Cosmologically, one can see theemergence of a fuller understanding of the universearticulating qualitative as well as quantitative aspects.Among the many interesting papers, the work of GastonBachelard was unfamiliar to me. The volume can berecommended as a valuable way of enhancing one’sunderstanding of an esoteric perspective.

Seeing with Different Eyesedited by Patrick Curry and Angela Voss (SMN)Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2007, 350 pp., £39.99, h/b.

Essays on astrology and divination originating at aconference held at the University of Kent in 2006 (seeabove). The title of this scholarly collection ofinterdisciplinary studies was inspired by a quotation byPlotinus who wrote that we should ‘shut our eyes andchange to and wake another way of seeing, which everyonehas but few use.’ Accordingly, a central theme is thatdivinatory knowledge involves a different mode of insightand a corresponding shift in perception. The essays rangeover many cultures and schools, including Chaldea,Stoicism, Iamblichus, Theravadan Buddhism, astrology,medicine and Mayan culture. The tension between divinationand the normal approach of academic studies is particularlyfruitful and brings the reader to a deeper understanding ofthe meaning of participatory knowledge.

PSYCHOLOGY/PARAPSYCHOLOGY

Cognitive Psychologyby Michael W Eysenck and Mark T KeaneTaylor & Francis 2010, 752 pp., £29.95, p/b.

Sixth edition of this highly acclaimed and accessible studenttextbook, with increased emphasis on cognitiveneuroscience, a new chapter on cognition and emotion and,significantly, they owe final chapter on consciousness. Thefirst four parts the deal with visual perception and attention,memory, language, thinking and reasoning. The last part ison broadening horizons, containing the new chapters.Prominence is given to global workspace theory, according towhich a selective attention helps us determine theinformation of which we become aware, although there isalso evidence that conscious awareness can precedeselective attention. There are online links for bothinstructors and students, including reference links to keyjournal articles and even a chapter by chapter PowerPointlecture course.

Cognition & Emotionby Jan De Houwer and Dirk HermansPsychology Press 2010, 347 pp., £39.95, h/b.A technical review of current research and theories about theinterplay between cognition and emotion. The aim of thebook is to pride researchers and students with state-of-the-art reviews of the most important research topics, specifyingthe relevant issues, the main theories, findings andconclusions and the most important challenges for thefuture. In addition, there is a discussion about how theresearch topics are related, especially with respect to themost important series and their bearing on the evidence.Topics include the psychology of emotion regulation, theeffects of emotion on attention, measures of emotion andthe perception and categorisation of emotional stimuli.

Mindworlds: A Decade of Consciousness Studiesby J Andrew RossImprint Academic 2009, 342 pp., £24.95, p/b.A series of papers by a regular contributor to the Journal ofConsciousness Studies who also has his own philosophicalblog at www.andyross.net. Helpfully, these 16 papersupgraded easy, middle or hard and each is explained in theintroduction, which is followed by an informative autobiographythat forms the backdrop to the following papers, which werewritten for a variety of occasions and audiences. It is a goodway of becoming acquainted with the central issues underconsideration, and ends with a brickbat arising out of ascathing review by Colin McGinn of a book by Ted Honderich.

Ten Years of Viewing from Withinby Claire PetitmenginImprint Academic 2009, 404 pp., £17.95, p/b.A reconsideration of first person approaches to the study ofconsciousness on the 10th anniversary of an edition of theJournal of Consciousness Studies edited by Francisco Varelaand Jonathan Shear. Varela has died in the interim, so thisvolume is devoted to his legacy, and is edited by one of hisformer doctoral students. The contributions are wide rangingand necessary technical, so this will appeal to existing JCSreaders and subscribers.

The Intelligent Guide to the Sixth Senseby Heidi SawyerHay House Publishers 2010, 169 pp., £8.99, p/b.This book receives a strong endorsement from Member Prof.Kim Jobst in his Foreword, telling the author’s own story andproviding a guide to our subtle intuitive faculties and theirdevelopment. This opens up the big questions of life and theneed to understand unusual experiences, especially in amaterialistic culture. There are chapters on choosing apsychic, the purpose of readings, blocks to psychicawareness, healing and psychic children. Towards the end ofthe book there is a summary of techniques and advice, anda reflection on the difficulties of pursuing this path in theface of family and other opposition.

The Shiftby Dr Wayne W DyerHay House Publishers 2010, 155 pp., £8.99, p/b.A simple yet profound book about taking your life fromambition to meaning, from the sense of separation andisolation to one of spiritual connectedness and purpose. Itis easy to identify with one’s possession, position andreputation, but these are symptoms of a sense of separationinherent in identifying with the ego. This also involves senseof separation from God. Gradually, we shift and turn around,with the belief of unity replacing our belief in separation. Weare motivated by ethics and quality of life and become open

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to the possibility of miracles being part of our life, at thesame time deepening our spiritual practice. Dyer describesthe four cardinal virtues that constitute our original natureas reverence, natural sincerity, gentleness andsupportiveness as we move towards a more trustingattitude to life.

Truth, Triumph and Transformationby Sandra Anne TaylorHay House Publishers 2010, 268 pp., £9.99, p/b.

A helpful book based on many of the dilemmas andconfusions brought about by a simplistic understanding ofthe law of attraction and creation. A literal andfundamentalist approach always misses the spirit of creativesuccess as it tries to reduce the process to a set of rigidformulas. The first part of this book looks at various casehistories, especially where things have not gone smoothlyor as anticipated. For instance, clear intentions are only partof a much larger process which has to be lived as well asunderstood - flexibility and openness are essential. There isan excellent summary towards the end, including essentialprinciples of the power of consciousness and six relatedkeys to conscious creation including gratitude and love. Thestrongest thing we emanate is a direct reflection of our beingin terms of prevalent thoughts and feelings constituting whatSwedenborg called our ruling love.

The Napkin, the Melon and the Monkeyby Barbara BurkeHay House Publishers 2010, 130 pp., £7.99, h/b.

An appealing modern-day parable of stressed outprofessional life involving Olivia, an assistant at MightyPower’s customer service call centre. It’s a nightmarescenario and Olivia’s sunny disposition and can-do attitudeis soon worn down by the constant barrage of angry callsfrom frustrated customers. In desperation, she consultsIsabel, an experienced rep and the wise woman of themoment. This provides the framework for 22 life lessonswhich enable Olivia to turn things round as she resigns withimmediate effect her position as General Manager of theUniverse and discovers the power of letting go. Among thelessons are ‘the nicer I am to myself, the nicer I am toothers’, ‘ the less I talk, the more I learn’ and ‘ problems canbe gifts in disguise.’ An entertaining book full of practicalwisdom.

Amazing Encountersby Elizabeth Nowotny-Keane (SMN)David Lovell Publishing 2009, 204 pp., A$24.95, p/b.

There is a growing literature of well attestedcommunications from the deceased, to which this is awelcome addition with a foreword by the well-known writeron after death communications, Louis LeGrand. Manypeople are unaware that this field has been thoroughlyinvestigated for 130 years and that there is a vast databaseof case histories which cannot be dismissed withoutthorough review. In this book, the author groups storiestogether to show characteristic features, weaving them intoan overall narrative. The overall effect is to diminish the fearof death and reveal something of life’s deeper meaning. Thebook gives a good feel for the field and is a good place forthe novice to begin.

The Future of the Soulby Ian Lawton (SMN)Rational Spirituality Press 2010, 113 pp., £7.99, p/b. A small book about 2012 and the global shift inconsciousness, based on a series of channelling sessions.The big picture is that we are due for the kind of shift thathappens only every 26,000 years and that this process isbeginning to happen and will intensify over the next fewyears. According to these teachings, worldwide upheavalswill result in the loss of over a quarter of the globalpopulation and completely new systems of governance willemerge, much more in line with spiritual principles. There isa good deal of apocalyptic literature about, and we will haveto see how accurate it turns out to be.

Human Potentialby David VernonTaylor & Francis 2009, 267 pp., £19.95, p/b.An interesting academic study exploring techniques used toenhance human performance. The introduction explains thescope of the book with the emergence of the concept ofhuman potential in the work of Abraham Maslow, the desireto enhance human performance and the need to measurethis up against evidence. Vernon usefully debunks the myththat we use only 10% of our brain and constructs a rubricwhereby techniques are classified according to whether theyare traditional or contemporary, active or passive. The firstpart explores passive techniques such as hypnosis, sleeplearning, subliminal training and audiovisual entrainment;the second deals with meditation, mnemonics, speedreading, biofeedback, neurofeedback and mental imagerypractice. In each case the technique and procedure aredescribed along with the results of various studies. He thendraws a measured conclusion, assessing the extent to whichclaims for effectiveness are justified. More often than not,practitioners are inclined to overplay these claims. Forinstance, results in speed reading showed thatcomprehension drops sharply beyond 600 words per minute,although it is relatively easy to enhance reading speed from300 to 600 words per minute while retainingcomprehension.

FUTURE STUDIES/ECONOMICS/ECOLOGY

Local Moneyby Peter NorthGreen Books Ltd 2010, 240 pp., £14.95, p/b.Building on the recent spate of publications about transitiontowns, this book, under a new imprint Transition Books,explains how to make local money happen in yourcommunity and enable it to build a resilient economic future.It questions our current monetary system and explainsalternative currency models from various parts of the worldand the emergence of transition currencies in places likeTotnes, Stroud and Lewes, with instructions on how to goabout building a local currency as a means of helping createresilient local communities. This process supports localproduction of food and energy while at the same timereducing community carbon emissions. Comprehensive andpractical.

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Supercapitalismby Robert ReichIcon Books Ltd 2009, 272 pp., £8.99, p/b.Subtitled ‘the battle for democracy in an age of bigbusiness’, this brilliant overview of the evolving relationshipbetween capitalism and democracy enables one tounderstand some key developments of the last 50 years.Focusing mainly on America, the author explains howcapitalism and democracy were relatively evenly balanceduntil the 1970s, but since then intense global competitionhas produced supercapitalism as firms compete for ourattention as consumers and investors. As consumers, weare looking for better deals, and as investors for betterreturns. This conflicts with our role as citizens, andcompetitive pressures have encouraged companies to stepup their political contributions and lobbying efforts in orderto influence public policy to their advantage. Majorinstitutional checks such as labour unions have declinedand deregulation has won out, this latter factor being amajor contributor to the credit crunch. Negative socialconsequences of supercapitalism have included wideninginequality, reduced job security, loss of community andenvironmental degradation. The author argues thatdemocracy is the appropriate vehicle for responding to suchsocial consequences and that we must rediscover ourcapacity as citizens alongside our roles as consumers andinvestors. He encourages us to remember that the purposeof democracy is to accomplish ends that we cannot achieveas individuals and that we need to exercise our rights toprovide frameworks within which these social costs areproperly regulated. A major contribution to a critical debatefor our time.

How to Live a Low-Carbon Lifeby Chris GoodallEarthscan Ltd 2010, 300 pp., £14.99, p/b.Described as the carbon reduction bible (this is noexaggeration), the second edition of this extremely thoroughand comprehensive book shows how Westerners can reducetheir carbon emissions from around 14 to 2 tonnes perannum while saving money in the process. The authorexplains how we generate emissions both directly andindirectly, making numerous suggestions about how we canreduce our print by choosing to do things differently. Directemissions include home heating, water heating and cooking,lighting, household appliances, car travel, public transportand air travel, while much of the indirect effects arise fromthe growing and transportation of food. Both trends andemerging solutions are described in order to put thesituation in perspective. All the necessary information isprovided, so it is very much up to the reader to think throughthese issues in relation to their own lives and make futuredecisions according to the conclusions they draw.

Agrofuels: Big Profits, Ruined Lives and EcologicalDestructionby Francois HoutartPluto Press 2009, 196 pp., £13.99, p/b.A hard-hitting analysis, as one would infer from thecombative subtitle. Not so long go, biofuels were beingtouted as an ecologically sound means of combating climatechange, but the substitution of these crops for food led to arise in food prices and a realisation that decisions would bemade on the basis of short-term profits rather than long-term sustainability. The scope of the book is wider than onemight think, in that it discusses energy and developmentand the twin crises of energy and climate before moving onto the political dimensions leading to the promotion ofmarket friendly solutions to climate change. There aretechnical chapters on the characteristics of agrofuels and

agroenergy, specifically the production of ethanol from sugarcane and diesel from palm oil. This leads to variouscollateral effects and an explanation of the extension ofmonoculture and monopoly in the world food system. Finally,the author discusses alternative ways of solving the climateand energy crises. A highly informative if polemical read.

Environmental Ethics - the Big Questionsby David R KellerBlackwell Publishing 2010, 581 pp., £24.95, p/b.I doubt the editor knew what he was getting into when heagreed to put this textbook together while floating down theColorado River with the general editor of this series. It is amonumental achievement and one for which his studentsand colleagues will be very grateful since it must rank as thebible of environmental ethics with its synoptic overview ofthe field. The contributors are not only the leading thinkersof the last 40 years but also Western philosophers,especially on questions of defining anthropocentrism, whichincludes Aquinas, Francis Bacon and John Stuart Mill. Theintroduction defines environmental ethics, and is followed byreflections from leading thinkers about why they studyenvironmental ethics. The rest of the book unpacks the bigquestions in a series of sections on the scope of moralconsiderability, the grounding of environmental ethics,connections across the disciplines, and ethical dimensionsof environmental public policy, including population,agriculture, environmental justice and economics. Finally,Holmes Rolston III and reflects on the future ofenvironmental ethics. An essential reference book foranyone interested in this field. For a growing archive ofenvironmental ethics case studies, seewww.environmentalethics.info/

The Blue Economyby Gunter PauliParadigm Publications 2010, 308 pp., $29.95, p/b.This exciting new book follows the principle laid down byVicktor Schauberger that we should understand and copyingnature, as the author puts it, emulate ecosystems for a blueeconomy, one that is low carbon resource efficient andcompetitive. Leonardo da Vinci said presciently that‘everything comes from everything; everything is made ofeverything; everything turns into everything for all that existsin the elements is made of these elements.’ If the RedEconomy’ is an economy that borrows without thought ofrepayment, and the Green Economy requires companies toinvest more and consumers to pay more, the Blue Economyengages regeneration so that ecosystems can maintain theirevolutionary path and that ‘all can benefit from nature’sendless flow of creativity, adaptation and abundance.’ Thebook describes the rationale in more detail and finishes withdetails of 100 innovations inspired by nature withsuggestions about how they can be practically applied andhelp create 100 million jobs in the process. A visionarybook.

Cracking the Rainbow Codeby Jens Jerndal (SMN)Xlibris Corporation 2009, 154 pp., $10.70, p/b.Much of the material in this book will be familiar to Networkreaders, but it brings many issues together in a helpful andinspiring synthesis. The reader is addressed as a co-creatorof the future and invited to accompany the author on anadventure which questions the materialistic worldview andopens up new vistas and a deeper understanding of energy,consciousness and life and their underlying principles. Jensexplains the power of thought, the holographic andinformational nature of reality and the challenge to scienceof the non-materiality of consciousness. He explores the

www.scimednet.org

72 Network Review Summer 2010books in brief

www.scimednet.org

soul-body interface, the role of astrology and the limits of amechanistic approach in medicine. On the social front, hediscusses the cult of violence and the way in which this canmitigated. He also provides a new vision for education,extolling the spirit of investigation and questioning ofassumptions and warning how we are manipulated by fear.The final chapter integrates the rainbow code as the keyprinciple of resonance and reaffirms the necessity for aprofound shift in our world view.

GENERAL

Essential Life Coaching Skillsby Angela DunbarTaylor & Francis 2010, 201 pp., £16.99, p/b.This is a comprehensive guide to the range of skills requiredto succeed as a life coach, concentrating on the sevenessential skill sets with specific examples of how these areapplied and can be developed. These are relationshipbuilding, listening, questioning, intuitive, challenging,motivating and marketing skills. The book also gives thebackground to life coaching in the UK and how to provide ahigh quality service. There are case studies and adescription of the life coaching process based on a standardapproach. An excellent primer for those wanting to knowmore about the field.

101 Coaching Strategies and Techniquesby Gladeana McMahon and Anne Archer (eds)Taylor & Francis 2010, 302 pp., £16.99, p/b.This multi-author book sets out practical strategies to helpcoaches with their work. It focuses on a number of themes:confidence building, developing as a coach, specific skillsand strategies, focusing on the future, group coaching,problem solving and creativity, relationships, self-awarenessand when a client gets stuck. Each short section outlinesthe purpose, describes the process and warns of anypotential pitfalls. Most entries are no longer than two orthree pages, which makes it an ideal book to refer to or toread in small chunks on a regular basis. Coaches andtherapists will find much useful material here.

Achieving Excellence in Your Coaching Practiceby Gladeana McMahon et alTaylor & Francis 2006, 238 pp., £17.50, p/b.One of a series of highly practical books providing anaccessible guide to the business skills required to succeedas a self-employed coach. It assumes no prior knowledgeand goes through the whole process of being self-employed,making your business work, money matters, marketing andsound business practice. It serves as an introduction as wellas a reference guide to more experienced practitioners. Thebook contains many valuable tips and opportunities toreflect on the content and apply it to your own situation.

Dowsing - the Ultimate Guide for the 21st Centuryby Elizabeth BrownHay House Publishers 2010, 301 pp., £12.99, p/b.A comprehensive guide to the field written in an accessiblestyle and based on 20 years of experience and wide reading.It discusses the history and changing perception of dowsing aswell as giving detailed practical instructions and dealing withthe mechanics and ways in which dowsing can be applied tohealth. Of particular interest is the way in which the authormakes connections with recent work in science andconsciousness studies suggesting, like Ervin Laszlo, that welive in an interconnected matrix or field of consciousness. Asshe puts it: ‘we are already intrinsically connected to every part

of the universe as a holographic model.’ Towards the end of thebook, the author describes an encounter with Chris Frenchwhere it is clear that he is exerting an experimenter effect inan unsuccessful study. There is still much unease in orthodoxscientific circles about the status of dowsing, but there is nodoubt that it works in real life. This book will appeal to readerssearching for a wider understanding.

Time, Consumption and Everyday Lifeby Elizabeth Shove et alBerg Publishers 2009, 236 pp., £19.99, p/b.I imagine that every reader of this pub lication feels more orless time pressured. This book invites people to step backfrom their situation and con sider time from a number ofdifferent angles, investigating the changing rhythms andtemporal organisation of everyday life and how we handlestress. As the editor puts it: ‘Time is about co-ordination andrhythm, but it also involves material, and emotional, moraland political dimensions. Time is punctuated byextraordinary events like birth and death, but is alsoorganised through a range of ordinary routines, like sleeping,eating or watching the evening news.’ The book is arrangedaround a number of case studies from different cultures,including a comparative analysis in the UK between 1937and 2000 and seasonal and commercial rhythms ofdomestic consumption in Japan. The reader comes awaywith a much more subtle understanding of the topic.

The Mystery of Meetingby Steve BriaultSophia Books 2010, 160 pp., £10.99, p/b.A book about relationships as a path of discovery and a keyelement in our fulfilment. These relationships exemplifywhat the author calls an existential tension betweenindividualism and group identification where the challenge isto create healthy relationships between increasingly self-directed human beings. A key theme running through thebook is that of thresholds, including those of intimacy andwork, where encountering another is a threshold experienceinvolving both developmental challenges and opportunitiesfor personal development in terms of perceptions, attitudesand behaviour. The book finishes with an inspiring quotationfrom Owen Barfield where he states that love is the force atthe core of all human conscious experience; it cannot bespoken of but we can attempt to live it.

Scientific and Medical Network

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Scientific & Medical Network

MYSTICS & SCIENTISTS 34

The Nature of Dreams: On the Threshold of Other Realities

15th – 17th April 2011University of Winchester

SPEAKERS:Dr. Larry Dossey,

Prof. Charles Laughlin, Cedrus Monte, Dr. Morton Schatzman,

Paul Devereux

For bookings and further details:PO Box 11, Moreton-in Marsh, Glos, GL56 0ZF Tel: 01608 652000E-mail: info@scimednet.org

www.scimednet.org

Scientific and Medical Network

Saturday 6th November, 2010Queen Mary, University of London,

(15 mins from Central London)

A cross disciplinary dialogue for the occasion of thepublication of the new SMN book

A NEW RENAISSANCE:Transforming Science, Spirit and Society

BOOK

AVAIL

ABLE AT

REDUCED CO

ST

With contributionsfrom 20 leading

worldwide thinkers

An opportunity to hear and contribute in a special forum

OPEN DIALOGUESaturday 23rd October 2010

SpeakersProf. David Canter • Prof. Sean Spence

Lord Justice Toulson • Prof. Graham Wagstaff

ChairsJacky Owens

and Claudia Nielsen

Royal Society of Medicine Section of Hypnosis & Psychosomatic Medicine

The Scientific and Medical Network

Criminal Intent andResponsibility:

Exploring Conscious and Unconscious Motivation

Royal Society ofMedicine

1 Wimpole StreetLondon

W1G 0AE

Enjoy the Frenchman’s Cove Experience, a unique setting for a remarkable combination of conference and

recreation in Port Antonio, Jamaica

15th to 20th March 2011

Participants will join Cosmologist Professor Paul Davies andMartin Redfern of the BBC to consider

Life, the Universe and Everything!Was the big bang the ultimate origin of everything, or merely one

bang among many scattered through space and time? Is lifeinevitable and everywhere or are we unique?

Accommodation is in the Great House or in luxurious villas dotted around themagnificent gardens, most overlooking the sea. Morning sessions at the Great Houseare followed by lunch at the beach, afternoons of leisure or exploration, workshopsand discussions on the theme, evenings at local restaurants, and moonlit parties.

The cost of accommodation varies between $45 and $100 a night excluding meals.Registration is £200, or £350 for a couple

Organised by the Frenchman’s Cove Conference Committee in association with theScientific and Medical Network.

For details contact Diana Clift on di@dianaclift.com

The Network aims to:

Network Services

� Network Review, published threetimes a year

� Monthly e-newsletter for memberswith email

� Promotion of contacts betweenleading thinkers in our fields ofinterest

� A blog discussing current andcontroversial topics and science,medicine and spirituality(http://scimednet.blogspot.com)

� A website with a special area forMembers including discussiongroups

� Regional groups which organise localmeetings

� Downloadable MP3s from ourconferences

Network ConferencesThe Network’s annual programme ofevents includes:

� Three annual residentialconferences (The Annual Gathering,Mystics and Scientists and Beyondthe Brain alternating with The Bodyand Beyond)

� Annual residential conference in aContinental European country

� An open day of dialogues on atopical subject

� Evening lectures and specialistseminars

� Special Interest Group meetings onthemes related to science,consciousness and spiritualtraditions

� Student concessionary rates andsome bursaies available

Joining the NetworkMembership of the Network is open toanyone who wishes to explore someof the most difficult questions of ourtime in concert with a community oflike minds. Student members must bestudying towards a first degreeengaged in full-time study.

Subscription RatesMembership of the Networks costs£40. Please contact the office forfurther details.

Student Membership for full-timefirst degree students: £15

Membership ApplicationsTo request a membership applicationform, please contact:

The Network Manager, The Scientific and Medical Network,PO Box 11, Moreton-in-Marsh,Glos. GL56 0ZF, EnglandTel: +44 (0) 01608 652000 Fax: +44 (0) 1608 652001 Email: info@scimednet.org

� challenge the adequacy of scientificmaterialism as an exclusive basisfor knowledge and values.

� provide a safe forum for the criticaland open minded discussion ofideas that go beyond reductionistscience.

� integrate intuitive insights withrational analysis.

� encourage a respect for Earth andCommunity which emphasises aspiritual and holistic approach.

In asking searching questions aboutthe nature of life and the role of thehuman being, the Network is:

� Open to new observations andinsights;

� Rigorous in evaluating evidenceand ideas;

� Responsible in maintaining thehighest scientific and ethicalstandards;

� Sensitive to a plurality ofviewpoints

The Scientific and Medical Network is a leading international forum forpeople engaged in creating a new worldview for the 21st century. TheNetwork brings together scientists, doctors, psychologists, engineers,philosophers, complementary practitioners and other professionals, andhas Members in more than thirty countries. The Network is a charitywhich was founded in 1973 and became a company limited by guaranteeat the beginning of 2004.