The new science of consciousness: Part two
by Laurie Nadel, Ph.D.
For the late Dr. Jonas Salk (1914-1995), inventor of the first polio vaccine, consciousness is the key to our successful growth and continuing survival as a species. In his book Anatomy of Reality: Merging of Intuition and Reason, he wrote, "Man's mind is seen here as a metasystem, a metabiological system, serving the human biological and other ecosystems in the course of serving itself. To serve itself it must preserve, and serve, other biological systems that are relevant to itself. It must, therefore, 'know,' intuitively and cognitively, what is of value to itself and other systems."
In 1960, Dr. Salk founded the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, specifically to sponsor and encourage scientific research with a compassionate, philosophical overview. The term biophilosophy was coined to describe the Salk Institute's interdisciplinary approach, which combines laboratory research with humanistic concerns. Dr. Salk, who described his work as "the science of the human side of nature," believed that humanity now has the potential for conscious evolution rather than simply evolving as a process of physical survival, and that human evolution is a mental process as well as a physical one. To that end, he believed that researchers in the sciences as well as the humanities must work together "to make the decisions and choices that Nature has made until now...for the greatest value to human life and society as a whole."
Those decisions include formulating a blueprint for successful evolution that is primarily mental in nature. "The evolution of the human mind...depends upon the evolution of intuition and reason," he wrote. "It is important to recognize the binary nature of this relationship and to focus upon intuition and upon reason separately and together. Our subjective responses (intuitional) are more sensitive and more rapid than our objective responses (reasoned). Intuition is an innate quality, but it can be developed and cultivated."
Intuitive thinking played an invaluable role in Dr. Salk's scientific research for many years. When studying viruses, for example, he would visualize himself as a particular virus then intuitively sense how that virus behaved. He would also visualize himself as the immune system to get a sense of how the immune system would battle the invading virus. Only after he envisioned a number of scenarios about a particular situation would he design his laboratory experiments to test his intuitive perceptions. When encountering phenomena in the laboratory that he did not understand, Dr. Salk would frequently return to his original question and ask himself how he would behave as a virus cell or an immune system. Yet he was quick to point out that this mental process occurred intuitively; that is, he was not engaged in a conscious projection of his consciousness.
"I feel as if this is all occurring at a level of my mind that I sense to be beneath consciousness and that seems to want to merge with my conscious mind," he wrote in Anatomy of Reality. "At the moment when the two converge, when they commune, I feel a rush of ecstasy, a sense of release, of satisfaction, of fulfillment." While Dr. Salk described himself as "practicing the art of science" and acknowledged the importance of intuition in his own scientific work, he also understood that there are other scientists for whom intuition is not significant. And while he respected those differences in mental preferences, Dr. Salk believed that "the phenomenon of consciousness and self-consciousness, as well as of intuition and reason, manifests the same pattern of a functional binary relationship which characterizes all matter, and all natural phenomena, from the simplest to the most complex."
Edgar Mitchell's Theory of Consciousness
Like Dr. Jonas Salk, former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell believes in a binary, or dyadic model of the universe in which consciousness must be taken into account as a causal element.
As a scientist and an astronaut, Mitchell has been personally searching for answers to this fundamental dichotomy. He conducted in-flight experiments in extra-sensory perception with professional psychics back on earth and reported a success rate that was phenomenally greater than that predicted by chance. In 1971, while on the Apollo 14 mission, he looked back at the earth from his space capsule and knew intuitively that an intelligence was at work in the universe.
Mitchell's epiphany in space did not end there. He returned to earth, left the space program, and founded the Institute for Noetic Sciences in Sausalito, California. "It is becoming increasingly clear that the human mind and physical universe do not exist independently," he says. "Something as yet indefinable connects them. This connective link — between mind and matter, intelligence and intuition — is what Noetic Sciences is all about."
Mitchell chose the word noetic from the Green work nous, meaning "mind, intelligence, and understanding." The word noetic encompasses the intellect's ability to reason, the perceptions of the physical senses, and the intuitive, spiritual, or inner ways of knowing. "The psychic part of the intuitive function, that is, the ability to perceive information in ways unexplainable, is a natural part of the universe. It is available to everyone. We have got to experience powerful intuition, psychokinesis, and healing to know that it is real. There is nothing magical or mystical about it. It is only that aspect of the unknown which we cannot explain yet," Mitchell says.
While most physicists believe that everything can be reduced to matter and energy, and mentalists take the view that consciousness is the causal element, Mitchell believes that both are mutually necessary. "Like the north and south pole, you need both matter and consciousness for the universe to be complete." Mitchell sees mainstream science as primarily reductionist, breaking the atoms down to elemental particles. Although that is valid for the physical spectrum, he believes that you have to take into account the nonphysical spectrum, as well. You have to ask, "What is the most elemental thing about our nonphysical essence?" For Mitchell, who holds a doctorate in aeronautics and who has spent eighteen years developing this scientific theory, the answer is information - the ability and intent to distinguish between two simultaneous states. Like a north pole and a south pole, energy then becomes the basis of physical reality and information the basis of consciousness.
Mitchell's model is unique in its integration of the principles of physics with principles of the new science. "Physics says the matter/energy is the creator of all while the religious camp says that the mind is the creator of all. Everyone is trying to create a monadic model, one that posits one or the other as correct," he says. And he believes that in failing to recognize the binary or dual nature of the physical and nonphysical dimensions, scientists are restricting their own efforts to find answers.
For example, Mitchell points to the difficulty that physicists have had in trying to come up with a unified field theory. Scientists today have one set of equations for subatomic activity and a different set of equations for atomic activity. A unified field theory would allow them to develop consistent equations for both subatomic and atomic activity. "It's clear that they are interconnected and that the subatomic level affects what happens at the cosmic level. Tiny, subtle effects do have a major impact, but it's not clear that with the present state of knowledge scientists can write the same equation for both cosmic and subatomic levels," Mitchell notes.
Until science studies the fundamental interaction between micro determinism and macro determinism no scientist will be able to develop a unified field theory. As Mitchell points out, "Scientists will never find the unified field theory until they look at human consciousness. Mind and mental phenomena are the last challenge of physics."
"The New Science" is excerpted from Dr. Laurie Nadel's Sixth Sense: Unlocking Your Ultimate Mind Power
