Superconscious and Spirituality

The Big Questions series

Is there a detached (transcendent) spiritual?

(See the videocast of this article on Youtube.)

Welcome to a joint article-post and videocast of my Patheos New Generations Explore Faith article series, the Big Questions, and my Substack Our Times Today and Tomorrow series on spirituality.

Spirituality, since the eleventh century, has been acknowledged as the proximate, or near at hand spirituality, mostly involving our relationships. But it also involves gaining insight from the detached (transcendent) spiritual through the superconscious.

The superconscious is defined as: “transcending human consciousness. Of, relating to, or possessing the highest consciousness……….. or a margin of consciousness above that within the ordinary range of attention compare subconscious.”

The American Psychological Association defines superconscious as: “… a higher state of awareness that is associated with creative inspiration, spiritual insight, and the attainment of peak experiences.” – APA Dictionary of Psychology

Wikipedia says: “It is able to acquire knowledge through non-physical or psychic mechanisms and pass that knowledge to the conscious mind.” Also, “awareness of the inner core of one’s existence, that is, one’s self or identity.”

An example of the superconscious is when we see, hear, or experience something. It lodges in our consciousness and sparks a creative idea which leads to a new product, a new way of thinking about things – some call that reframing. We also experience this as a better sense of how what we do impacts others, and as a deeper felt connection with others, the universe and God.

Is there evidence for a spiritual world detached from our body, requiring transcendence to communicate with it? And even more importantly, can we rely on what we find?

Communicating could be something as simple as language, to represent ideas from the world. While that is very real and comprehensive for the proximate spiritual, it doesn’t get to the point of a detached spiritual that is reached without uttering a word, even in cyberspace.

Using the Scientific Method for proof of the spiritual world

In both my Patheos and Substack articles-posts I’ve tried to put the spiritual on firm footing so it’s not something spooky and without merit. I began with solid research explaining how the mind operates from a scientific perspective and what we know about consciousness from science. I looked at how words and ideas work in the mind. I’m trying to separate the objective aspects from the subjective. Objective aspects can be tested scientifically. Subjective content varies from person to person.

I like to start with something funny but I didn’t find any funny quotes about the superconscious, which makes me very suspicious right from the start. Having no sense of humor is never good. I like the Buddha because he is always pictured smiling. Jesus only smiles on TV.

Many famous scientists viewed religion favorably but skeptically. Stephen Hawking eventually concluded that science doesn’t leave a space for God. The Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics. But Hawking left us hanging. We need a psychic to contact him and find out who created the laws of physics. I found some humor.

Anyway, I found this quote from writer and spiritual teacher Florence Scovel Shinn on Quote Mantra, which I think puts this in perspective: “Change your thoughts, and in the twinkling of an eye, all your conditions change. Your world is a world of crystallized ideas, crystallized words. Sooner or later, you reap the fruits of your words and thoughts.”

I like to think I’m an original thinker but am always surprised when someone like Florence had these thoughts in the 1800s. It seems eventually we all walk the same spiritual paths.

Science does a similar thing with math. Math isn’t a scientific reality, it’s a human construct used for representation of the physical world. It works so far to prove things don’t exist.

I love this methodology. I have an agreement with alligators that we don’t eat each other. It’s worked so far. I have a no elephant sign on my front yard. So far that has worked. I haven’t seen any vampires, so I’m pretty sure that their absence means that silver gets rid of them. Well, this is amusing but it illustrates that scientific reasoning sometimes relies on negatives. The fallacy is, you can’t prove a negative.

In scientific thought, science doesn’t measure anything spiritual therefore science says it doesn’t exist. Case closed. There’s nothing here to think about.

See, there are no unicorns. Oh, wait, here comes the virgin riding one now. It’s an Arabian oryx. From the side its two horns look like one and it really resembles a unicorn. Trailing behind her are eight other animals with one horn. I really wish she hadn’t brought a rhinoceros even if the extinct one from Asia really resembles modern conceptions of a unicorn. By the way, it’s not really a snuggly creature.

Disproving science

Superstring proof: No evidence exists to prove or disprove it.

Black hole proof: Scientists infer the presence of black holes and study them by detecting their effect on other nearby matter. Could it maybe be the Great Bear Constellation playing with us?

Dark matter proof: Scientists believe this material makes up more than one quarter of the universe. But it can’t be directly seen or felt. Its existence is inferred by gravitational impact. I love inferences.

Dark energy proof: Dark energy hasn’t been directly observed or measured. Instead, scientists can only make inferences about it from its effects on the space and matter we can see. Again with the inferences.

Wormhole proof: Einstein’s theory of general relativity mathematically predicts the existence of wormholes, but none have been discovered to date. I’m not sure that any scientist takes wormholes seriously but they’re a lot of fun in fiction.

Is the universe infinite or just very big? Ever more powerful telescopes show the boundary is farther and farther away, and each new observation makes the universe older than currently thought.

How long does a proton live? Depends on whether it’s a trade name or subatomic particle. Scientists don’t know.

We have all heard a lot about superstring theory, black holes, dark matter, and dark energy. None of them are proven to actually exist. Their existence is supported mathematically and inferred from their effect on other things in the universe. So lacking direct evidence, I’ve proven that they don’t exist, no matter what scientists choose to believe. But unicorns do exist.

This is fun, but I’ve poked enough fun at science. Actually I have a lot of respect for scientists and I really like science, especially theoretical science. I hope all of these theories are true.

Is it even possible to transcend the physical universe?

Over the centuries, mystics, psychics, and individuals have sensed the great beyond. Religious organizations always view their messages with skepticism but can’t negate them. Religion is about beliefs and praxis to help and guide individuals. The spiritual is about the individual’s meaning and purpose. Both have their place and don’t negate each other. Some churches have even encouraged prophecy with mixed results.

We like to have proof. We like to know we’re not being spoofed by some lunatic. We would like the subjective to be objective.

What is proof of the spiritual?

What would it take to prove that the detached or transcendental spiritual exists and that people can communicate with it?

From science’s point of view, spooky quantum entanglement is proven with photons, electrons, and even small diamonds. It’s interesting that when particles are entangled and separated, what happens to one also happens to the other. (Quantum entanglement means that aspects of one particle in an entangled pair depend on aspects of the other particle. This is regardless of how far apart they are or what lies between them.)

This relationship illustrates that there is somehow communications or other form of connectedness between the two particles. This is still considered a correlation, not a cause-and-effect relationship. But the correlation is consistent.

At most, fundamental science has shown that all particles and all energy are produced by waves. Quantum mechanics, which includes entanglement, works on any size object. However, classical physics is generally used for objects larger than a few particles.

Quantum entanglement and people

There is some research suggesting that people may also be entangled. I get entangled with my wife and the outcome is rarely pleasant. The power of prayer or positive thoughts to cure disease or hold it at bay was explored in an NPR broadcast, Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person? The findings were that those who prayed for their own disease were more likely to be healed. The scientific evidence in this study was the absence of viral and bacterial pathogens.

One indication that remote prayer or other forms of alternative medicine are helpful is simply that many of those receiving treatments feel better. From the NIH and Science Direct: Does a form of ‘entanglement’ between people explain healing? An examination of hypotheses and methodology,  and Does a form of ‘entanglement’ between people explain healing? An examination of hypotheses and methodology.

In general scientific studies on prayer for others continue to be inconclusive. A meta study of many studies showed no discernible benefit. But these studies focus on different things. For example a Mayo Clinic study focused on outcomes after cardiovascular surgery. It indicated that prayer by others was not helpful.

A more focused, double-blind study on 3393 patients with blood infections showed significant results of a shorter stay in hospital and shorter duration of fever in patients with a bloodstream infection. Researchers concluded this study should be considered for use in clinical practice. NIH: Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial.

Prayer may work better on living things like viruses and bacteria. It may be that prayer works better on living things like viruses and bacteria and this is exemplified by both those reported by NPR on suppressing or curing their own disease through prayer and by this study on blood infections. Better studies need to be done.

Is there proof of transcendence by psychics

While some don’t believe psychic phenomena exist, or don’t want to believe it, the CIA, and the US and foreign militaries used it effectively for many years. Some remote viewing psychics had consistent accuracy above 90%. Some were used for beneficial purposes, such as finding missing people. From the University of California is the article: An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning

Is remote viewing and other psychic phenomenon useful?

Following the frauds of the 1800s and 1900s who purported to contact dead relatives, we should be very skeptical. However, it is important not to throw out the good with the bad.

The question hanging over remote viewing isn’t that it’s possible, but is it useful? By useful, we mean that we can make decisions based on it. It is a subjective experience. Military and CIA leaders want high confidence levels and not everyone with these abilities can deliver it. But most people can develop these abilities to some extent.

Generally it’s found that multiple viewers give better results. See the article: Stock Market Prediction Using Associative Remote Viewing by Inexperienced Remote Viewers Background and Motivation.  Since the stock market usually goes up and people are generally optimistic, this makes those results questionable.

More certainty is provided by the book, The Alexandria Project. This book details the results of five universities and organizations’ efforts to determine if remote viewing in archaeology works. They began by having several people from different locations independently create remote viewing maps of where archaeological ruins might be located.

Using the combined results, they had excellent findings. And they even took one remote viewer with them and asked him to locate unknown ruins. He referred to a barren location, took them there, and said if they dug there they would find a wall. They did, and found even more.

People who remember past lives are another indicator of getting information in some way that isn’t possible in the real world. People with these experiences simply don’t have access to that information, but when checked the person and environment they remember is found to exist. This is reported in the University of Virginia, School of Medicine: Children Who Report Memories of Previous Lives

A huge number of people describe communication with loved ones they are separated from, especially at the time of traumatic events. It isn’t just twins who do this. Many report seeing loved ones. Most don’t report it openly for a variety of reasons.

Near Death Experiences

Another significant area of confirmation of a connection beyond this world is Near Death Experiences (NDEs).

We don’t know what happens in the brain at death. Death is defined as the heart stops and can’t be resuscitated, which ironically isn’t the medical definition of life, which is brain activity. This is confusing. Anyway, does all brain electrical activity stop at death?

I know of one man who accidentally hit a power line with an aluminum ladder, electrocuting him. He turned to his father and said, “I’m dead.” And he was. It takes a moment after your heart stops for brain activity to cease.

Doctors know that after 40 seconds, the overwhelming majority of neural activity in the brain ceases. The thinking region of the brain, or the cerebral cortex, slows down and flat lines but brain cells in some parts of the brain may still be active or minimally active.

Consciousness ceases at this point. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain active during consciousness (this is the prefrontal and posterior occipital cortices and the claustrum), and this is the first to stop during death. But other areas of the brain that recognize speech may not yet be inactive. People report hearing conversations in medical facilities during resuscitation when they’re not conscious.

The brain’s survival mechanism may still be active and trying to revive the body. Spikes in brain activity occur, and messenger chemicals are often released during the first few minutes of dying. But this doesn’t result in consciousness.

This partial activity may be responsible for people remembering conversations during Near Death Experiences. But—and this is a big but—people often see things that could not be visible to them during these experiences, and these items or people are confirmed later to have been present but were completely out of the field of view of the person, such as on top of a cabinet, people in the hall outside, and things or people in waiting rooms.

Skeptical doctors are commonly won over when they have these experiences, and also by reports from people seeing or knowing things that were impossible for them to observe but were confirmed. There are hundreds of reports from those who have literally died in the hospital, had no brain activity for over seven minutes, and then come back with complete stories of seeing things in this world that were impossible to see or hear, and reports from visiting Heaven and seeing spiritual leaders like Jesus or “the big three.”

Usually these reports from the next world are subjective and based to some extent on the person’s religion; this makes them subjective. But the information they retain doesn’t necessarily support their religious beliefs. While some receive confirmation, others receive entirely new information. People who have had this experience are usually affected in beneficial ways.

Other altered states

Drug-induced states may be another clue to how such encounters as NDEs can help change us. Studies have shown that the mushroom psilocybin can be used therapeutically to relieve symptoms of treatment-resistant depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, fear and anxiety, and other mental health disorders. Refer to University Hospitals: “Magic Mushrooms,” Psilocybin and Mental Health

Some psychedelic drugs, usually from mushrooms, have given people a “God encounter.” Around 75% of people having this experience report the experience as among the most meaningful and spiritually significant in their lifetime, attributing it to positive changes in life satisfaction, purpose, and meaning. Refer to Experiences of ‘Ultimate Reality’ or ‘God’ Confer Lasting Benefits to Mental Health

Skeptics and proof

Skepticism is healthy. We shouldn’t be gullible, and we should look for explanations for things that happen. We shouldn’t just jump on the “it was supernatural” or “it could have been done this way” bandwagons. As NASA is finding about unidentified things that fly, only around 2% defy reasonable explanation and they are looking for better tools for investigating these rather than stating they don’t exist.

Many skeptics do nothing more than sow doubt. They say, “it could have happened this way,” but don’t bother to prove it. The CIA came to this same conclusion about skeptics’ criticism of psychic abilities.

On the one hand we have skeptics who couldn’t possibly believe in anything not easily measured by scientific instruments. We also have those who find reason within their religion to ignore these things. Nothing will ever convince them because they’ve already proved a negative in their minds. They shouldn’t believe in black holes and dark matter either because there is even less evidence for them.

On the other hand we have definitive and repeatable proof of many psychic experiences which satisfy many knowledgeable researchers and scientists who design experiments that can’t be confounded.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we know that what we call the superconscious exists. There is some mechanism by which, consciously or subconsciously, we can be in contact with other people during times of extreme trauma. In addition, we can have psychic experiences either spontaneously or on demand.

We might even have Near Death Experiences in which we see and hear things and get enlightening information from a world beyond this one. We might be profoundly changed by these experiences.

What matters to me is the realization that we are three-dimensional beings. First we are physical beings connected to a physical world and operating as a brain and body. This focuses on survival and a related trait, dominance. Add to this empathy. Empathy seems to be an innate trait, although for some it seems only to be learned.

Second we are spiritual beings in our proximate spiritual environment. People create the spiritual world around them from their thought processes in what we choose to emphasize, create, and share. Our  proximate spiritual world is our relationships with others and our environment.

Third is the superconscious. The evidence is that we can contact what is detached from us by time and distance, and even contact the next world.

Our spiritual world is very complex

Human relations are at the forefront of our thoughts, after survival and meeting our needs. We establish relationships with each other in many ways.

We establish relations by ensuring there is justice in this world. That is, we create laws to prevent harm, to be remedial, and to some extent compensational to make people whole after crimes or other unfair events.

Included in the spiritual are ideas of creativity, beauty, and entertainment which change over time and is a reflection of us.

We form economic systems to ensure people aren’t estranged from making a living and to create a fair playing field among businesses. We educate people so that they can survive and thrive in this world, as well as compete. We allow free expression of religion so that each person has free expression in their relationship with God or religious practices.

All of these things I’ve mentioned reflect higher values that aren’t tied to dirt and concrete—the physical sciences—and have been defined as spiritual since the Eleventh Century.

As Jesus said about the commandments, “The second is like it, ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

In other words, Jesus said Judaism puts God first, and just as importantly includes our relations with other people. The entire Bible is based on this. This is reflected just as well in other religions and other societies.

The detached spiritual world

We aren’t limited to our proximate spiritual world within and expressions of it in our behavior and relationships. There is the detached spiritual world. It’s a world of ideas we may find compelling. We consider compelling ideas and then change ourselves or our world.

It isn’t through meditation that we enter the detached spiritual world. Meditation generally enables the discovery of new thinking through personality integration, which integrates past knowledge and experience into new realizations.

In the detached spiritual world we may find information that is completely new. Many find that by eating certain mushrooms or having near death experiences they experience profound change and gain new meaning and purpose in their lives.

Reliability of the spiritual world

I’ve never said that the spiritual world is reliable for making decisions. It’s considered subjective not objective.

The Apostle John warned, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist ….” Antichrist is opposite of Christ, devoid of love and good works.

I believe that part of the spiritual world is a land of ideas. They are there for us to prove or disprove, and some are misleading. Jesus represented the way of God, which is love. Ideas that counter love may be charming, but they lead in the wrong direction.

So dabbling in the spiritual world takes a great deal of discernment. Discernment means the ability to perceive, understand, and judge things clearly, especially those that are not obvious or straightforward.

I know people who are amazingly spiritual in their thinking and seem closely attuned to God, yet I don’t think they are always right. But neither am I. The over 2000 Christian denominations plus the huge number similarly reflected in Hinduism, over twelve in Islam, and at least five major Jewish sects with multiple denominations, indicate that no one has a handle on objective information.

We are all subjective in our beliefs, trying to understand God in different aspects.

Filling the probability and potential space

I like to ask in my Patheos column, “What does this mean to us?” Is it all just hot air or can we really use this information?

In my Our Times Today and Tomorrow Substack column I like to ask each person to think about probability and potential spaces in which we can grow. Probability spaces means that conditions are right for something to happen or come into being. Potential spaces means that we have an area to grow into that is undefined – we’re missing something but we don’t know what.

Spirituality is a reality, it’s about things we can use, and enables both probabilities and potential space in which to grow.

To both followers I present the following question:

“How can we be more discerning about the spiritual world?” It’s a subjective experience that can be very helpful, or maybe can be misleading. If we pursue it, and I’m not sure we can avoid pursuing it if it’s done subconsciously, how do we make sure we are finding helpful things?

I like to close with the thought, “Our answer is God. God’s answer is us. Together we make the world better.”

In other words we turn to God for answers. And we are thoroughly embroiled in this world of people, their relationships, their difficulties, their pursuits, and growth.

God hears us and God’s answer is us. We have a responsibility to others given to us by God to work with others in a loving way for better outcomes.

That’s it for today, and I have a very busy summer ahead so these articles-posts and videocasts will likely be sparse but we’ll talk about more concrete issues that we can deal with from a spiritual point of view.

Links for this videocast are in the corresponding articles. Links to the article are in the YouTube description for this videocast.

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