There is the evidence and testimony of shamans from many different cultures about these nonphysical realms and what powers and entities exist there that can affect us, even physically. Officially, we treat this information gathered by shamans over centuries as so much superstition or childish thinking.

The same is true of the chakras and meridians. Eastern medicine has been aware for centuries of what they call the subtle energy bodies, and the chakras (energy centers) that sustain them and which sustain the physical body as well. Look at any acupuncture chart and you will see the complex energy points and pathways mapped out in very specific detail. Yet we ignore this information as though it is insignificant.

As a scientist, I am chagrined - maybe even embarrassed - by how our scientific institutions deny the nonphysical realities in the face of such overwhelming evidence. It's the same chagrin I would have felt, I'm sure, for those men who refused to look through Galileo's telescope and still call themselves scientists. The same thing is happening here in our own culture. In regard to the psychic and spirit dimensions, the telescope is being offered and I see our Institutions of Science refusing to look.

But why?

The objection most often made is that the evidence is anecdotal – based on people's personal experience and testimony – as though that makes it invalid. No, the issue here is not about evidence; it's about a shift in our paradigm of reality. If it is true that spirits exist, it will change our way of thinking, how we talk, and how we view reality and ourselves. Most importantly, it will change the choices we make. If spirits exist, we, as scientists, will have to abandon our most fundamental assumption, that matter is the ground of reality, that everything in the end can be reduced to its smallest physical components. The existence of spirits would clearly say that consciousness exists independent of the body and, most likely, prior to it. The acceptance that spirits exist would radically shift our focus from matter to consciousness as the ground of reality. In this paradigm, consciousness gives birth to matter, not the other way around.

For our Western culture, this would be a metaphysical and psychological shift of profound proportions. It's like the shift that would happen if a UFO parked itself on the White House lawn. How long would it take us to change our thinking; start asking new questions; and where would it take us? If spirits exist, we face the same kind of shift. We will have to re-think and question so much of what we thought was true. And we don't know where that will take us.

There is tremendous resistance to this change. To some degree, the resistance is normal when a person or society is confronted with such a shift. If spirits exist, it's going to change our perception of reality and ourselves. It won't make physical reality, the earth, or our body any less real, but It would point to consciousness as a higher order reality which subsumes and incorporates the physical.

What is at Stake?

By continuing to deny nonphysical realities, science itself is at stake. It balks at its own discoveries when they point to realities beyond the body and beyond our conception. Empirical science has confined itself to a 3-dimensional reality, and so when it comes to the invisible realities it has painted itself now into a corner. In terms of acknowledging invisible realities, it sees no way out but to destroy what it has taken so long to build. Acknowledging the existence of spirits breaks a lot of rules in our empirical paradigm.

Another way out, though, is if science finds a way to leap far enough and land beyond the ground of physical matter on which it is built. I am suggesting we can do the latter. If nonphysical realities do exist, we have to leap to another level of conception, one in which consciousness is a force in itself. We don't have such a conceptual framework in our Western culture. On the contrary, we live in a culture that keeps these invisible realities off-limits to science and the public, and keeps the focus only on the physical senses as defining what is real.

Other cultures do have conceptual frameworks that deal with consciousness, and recognizes the existence of spirits and invisible dimensions. Most of the phenomena I talk about on this website, for example, would not sound strange or bizarre in these other cultures. Some of these cultures, like Buddhism for example, have been dealing with the mind for centuries and have developed what we would call a science of consciousness.

Before we can avail ourselves, though, of what these other cultures and people have to teach us, we first have to believe we have something to learn here. We have to believe it is possible that there are dimensions of reality here that we've not been aware of, which do affect us, and which should be included in our thinking, but hasn't been. We have to temporarily suspend our judgement and empirical bias and study these phenomena and their implications on their own terms, not ours.

The problem for science, and our culture as a whole, is that the leap to a new conception necessarily means a revolutionary change in consciousness, individually and collectively. For example, it would be commonly accepted that when our loved ones die, they do not cease to exist but move to another level of consciousness and being. And if this is true, then we know the same is true of ourselves, that at death, we will re-awaken to our spirit consciousness. Imagine how this knowledge would change our thinking and our lives. The fear death, for example, so prevalent in our Western societies. What relief this knowledge would bring! What different choices people might make when living in a society where people acknowledge each other as spiritual beings? And not as a matter of belief, but as fact.

We're not there yet, but I believe we are coming to the leaping off place. As scientists, we've been coming to this point for a long time. It's about the duality that lies at the center of our empirical science and the internal contradictions we finally have to face. As we have peeled away the levels of matter using more and more sophisticated tools, we have come to the question of consciousness as as an active and creative force in the universe. It's the point at which we turn the microscope on ourselves, the conscious knower, and realize our dilemma. The philosophers call it the "subject/object dilemma". We cannot be the observer and observed at the same time. In the end, we are always consciousness studying consciousness. We cannot step outside the box, but begin to realize we create the boxes.

Einstein said problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them. This is certainly an example of what he was talking about. To solve the psychic and spirit realities, science will have to move to a new level of conception and consciousness. Accepting nonphysical realities is a leap. It's not a leap of faith, though. It's a leap in consciousness.