The question remains as to how and where one draws the line between ‘physical’ and ‘non-physical’ phenomena, and further, between natural and non-natural phenomena.
I would suggest that smilarly to how we are better able to draw what we are familiar with, we elucidate as best we can our widest range of perceptions according to our most familiar ideas and prejudices. In other words, because we labor most commonly at the level of perception that appears to our human senses as gross materiality, we will tend to interpret everything at a every level, as it becomes accessible to the extensions of our senses by maths or machines, according to the level of sense/logic/premise encounter
we have most habituated ours minds to.
In a moveie called
Down the Rabbit Hole, it is suggested that the aborigenese on the island Columbus first visited did not see his ships because they had no referent in their experience for such objects. Eventually they infered the presence of the ships through such things as they were familiar with, eg wave patterns and shadows, and the explorers themselves later. Smilarly the story is told of the farmer who could not see the steam engine in front of him because it was such a radically different object from his ordinary reality. The same has been said of juggling, something that was at one time regarded as magic, and even of UFO’s. Some people don’t see them, it is said, because there is nothing in their sense inventory of such objects behaving that way.
And fascinatingly, Penn and Teller have demonstrated that the cups and balls trick, you know, where the ball is under one of three glasses and you have to guess which one, can be done with clear glasses and it will still work! They are even a part, now, of a study of how stage magic exemplifies how humans are incapable of perceiving much that is right before their eyes and only perceivable when they are educated into the illusion step by step.
So perhaps the interpretations of physics and scirnce, and lo, of religion, are of things that naturally exist, but due to the inadequate education of the sensory apparatus a interpretive mind and its level of awareness, are not correctly or completely assesed. And certainly not into oranges of perception we as a race are ordinarliy not used to operating in. This would hold especially true, I would imagine, of descriptions of whole systems, thus certainly putting the lie to “objectivity.”
In a similar sense, we know that the developing human passes though certain stages of maturity, each one of those moving away from infantile self absorption to greater levels of inclusivity. The sense of self and what is identified as constituting it and what is important to it also develops. So one successively self identifies as bodyselfworld, objects seperate from that, eg mother, environment, family, sociial group, etc, into ever larger circles. Unless, perhaps, as MRI scans seem to indicate of those with conservative tendencies, they remain identified within themselves with the fear centers of the brain. Liberals tend, it seems, to be more whole brain active, and therefore more aware of systems survival as distinct from the need of personal survival.
But in any case, there are at least nine of these fulcrums of maturity definable by what the sense of self identifies with, even into the realm of ideas. Most commonly humans operate at the fifth level at best, with hints of the sixth. This sort of corresponds to the senses and intuition to a small degree. The higher levels have to do with experiential understanding of the inner reaches of awareness itself.
This is where the border is crossed into psychic and energy awareness, eg those who have ability to see auras, medical intuitives, etc. Then comes levels of mysticism and powers, and lastly the breaking of the identification of self with phenomena of any kind or degree. This last is the greatest mystery and the most controversial in terms of being not only misunderstood by those in less inclusive states, but denied by most as having any validity of existance at all. It is that radical in scope of shipt in identity. Some even give it a different category of knowledge, that of knowledge by identiy itself. So, basically, each level includes and transcends the level before it.
So as we as a race tend to operate somewhere mid-range on that scale as a matter of course, it is likely that our interpretations of our sense and mind experiences, no matter how rationally organized, will be at least incomplete and exclusive of those further ranges of familiarity with the extentions of awareness yet to ba achieved.
If this is appearant anywhere, it is most appearant in the realm of religious interpretation. Certainly there is a faciltiy for intellectually a institutionally categorizing the ordinary simple faithful as distinct from the lofty realms of Sainthood. But despite having an intellectual ability to say that Saints are qualitatively different, there is no expereintial referent in the ordinary “soul” that is able to distinguish what, in terms of awareness, is actually and substantially different from the ordinary parishoner and cleric and those lofy individuals.
And yet there is the necessary and persitent sense that one is completly complete as they are, despite evidence of lack of competency in any numbers of kinds and degrees of accomplishment, including levels of awareness, parituclaly of the interior dimensions. Indeed, due to the institutional nature of religion and the propensitiy to identify with dogma as “reality,” entire ranges of perception are not only denied as being possible by the ordinary faithful, but when someone attemts encouragement in the direction of maturity, there is very often reaction and even revilement. It is little wonder, in fact, that Jesus was crucified so easily. He was a very pink monkey amongst the furry brown ones and stood out too much to be comfortable relative to the ordinary paradigm of survival and explanation.
So is it any wonder that there are those few who say “whoa—wait a aminute—what if He meant xyz, not abc? Or both, but not that way?” Similarly, we will look at what little we know of science and existence itself and make our assesments and draw our conclusions according to the level of “reality” we percieve and feel as ours, and
because it is ours and we feel whole, mosty, distribute that feeling of wholeness over the data that is contents in our mind as a paradigm, however incomplete and therefore misleading. And that paradigm might itslelf be the best set of blinders going!
