Scientist of the Soul

Gary Zukav

Gary Zukav

A scientist is a seeker of truth.

For millennia the truth of human experience lay outside, in the world around us, and that is what scientists discovered. The first scientists were those who explored the use of tools, such as a sharp edged stone to cut, a stick as a lever and especially those who had the courage to explore fire. Can you imagine the courage it required to approach a tree that had been struck by lightning and was still burning, feel the heat, be burned, and then take a still-burning stick into a cave and discover that it warmed the cave? 

Perhaps those discoveries were not all done by a single individual, but knowledge accumulated through multiple explorations of the remarkable, terrifying phenomenon called fire allowed the last step to be taken - using fire.

Millennia later Isaac Newton (1642-1727) brought the exploration of the external world to a new level of utility and accuracy by quantifying it, and modern empirical science (limited to the five senses) was born. His experiments with optics, gravity and objects in motion freed thought from dogma by creating the ability to understand physical phenomena with numbers and, therefore, to predict physical phenomena. Moon landings, the international space station now under construction, and deep space probes now being planned are all possible because of Newton's discoveries.

Now an enormous and unprecedented transformation in the human experience is underway. Our perception is expanding beyond the limitations of the five senses. We are becoming aware of ourselves as more than bodies and minds, molecules and enzymes. We are becoming aware of our lives as purposeful and our experiences as meaningful. Our focus is shifting from exploration of the outside world to the exploration of interior experiences and their relationships with the outside world. This is the new frontier of human inquiry, and all seekers of truth are drawn to it.

The new frontier is the nonphysical reality of love and compassion, wisdom and authentic power - the alignment of the personality with the soul. It is understanding the dynamics - now made visible by our expanded perception - that underlie physical appearances, sustain them and make it possible to change them permanently (such as the war, starvation and brutality that pervade our collective experience and the anger, fear, jealousy and power struggles that pervade our individual experiences).

The new frontier challenges us to leave behind the comfortable and familiar self-image as victims of our lives - always praying for the best, hoping to avoid bad luck and hoping to be blessed by good luck - and replace it with a new and more accurate self-image of creators of our experiences. Exploration of the new frontier is an inquiry into self-mastery - the use of emotions to discover the sources of our painful experiences and destructive behaviors and the conscious use of intention to change them. It is also the use of emotions to discover the sources of our blissful experiences and constructive behaviors and the conscious use of intention to cultivate them.

Scientists of the soul are seekers of truth in this domain - courageous, intelligent, open and always willing to experiment. When the Italian scientist, Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642), first looked at the moon through a telescope he built, he was surprised to see that it was filled with craters. Until then, the moon had been considered perfect.

In fact, it had to be perfect because, according to the belief at that time, all celestial bodies were perfect. Many refused to look through his telescope and risk witnessing for themselves that their belief was false. Galileo was condemned by the Inquisition because many of his discoveries brought into question the church-approved version of truth. He escaped death only by disowning his own discoveries - discoveries that he knew to be true.

Long before Galileo and Newton, the Greek scientist, Plato (c. 428 - 347 BC), made an equally remarkable discovery. Our experiences of the world, he said, are not as real as they appear. They are more like shadows on the wall of a cave. To experience the real world requires coming out of the cave and into the light that creates the shadows. Plato used the idea of a cave as a metaphor. He did not intend to say that his contemporaries were literally living in a cave, and they understood that.

Metaphors can be very helpful because they utilize familiar images and common understanding to convey meaning in clear and simple ways. For example, if someone says that you are as beautiful as a flower, you understand that she does not think that you actually look like a flower, but you also understand that she thinks you are very beautiful. If someone says that you are as strong as a bull, you understand that he does not think that you actually look like a bull, and so on.

Years after I wrote The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics, I discovered that the concepts of quantum physics can be wonderfully used to explain authentic power and how to create it. My spiritual partner, Linda Francis, and I began experimenting with a workshop called Scientist of the Soul. After several presentations, we shifted our attention to other ways of presenting authentic power in a workshop format. However, the attraction of using the concepts of quantum physics to explain authentic power has returned to me even more strongly.

My initial reservation about discussing authentic power and the soul in the same context as quantum physics was giving the impression that science can prove the existence of the soul or nonphysical reality. It is futile to imagine that any five-sensory inquiry (such as empirical science, including quantum physics) can prove the existence of nonphysical reality, and therefore, the existence of divine intelligence and your soul, because the lesser cannot demonstrate the existence of the greater. Mathematicians would say that a subset cannot be used to prove the existence of the set. Yet nonphysical reality, the soul, and the living universe of wisdom and compassion are becoming part of the human experience for millions of individuals as humanity transits beyond the limitations of the five senses.

My concern was that those who are yet depending upon others, such preachers, peers, politicians and parents to validate their experiences would leap at the possibility that experts, such as physicists or anthropologists, could validate beliefs that they want validated rather than validating them (or not) through their own experiences.

In other words, that they would continue to defer to an obsolete definition of a scientist (five sensory) rather than become scientists of the soul. They would allow experimentation with physical circumstances in a laboratory by others to continue to take precedence over experimentation with the circumstances of their lives by themselves. Striving for authentic power (becoming the authority in your own life) because others have demonstrated that it is possible is driving with the brakes on.

Authentic power is the alignment of your personality with your soul, and your soul cannot be quantified (measured), bottled or put on display (except by you as humbleness, forgiveness, clarity and love become characteristics of your personality). It is not observable, much less demonstrable, by empirical means. Proving the existence of nonphysical reality is as impossible as proving the existence of God.

Nonetheless, there are numerous effective and engaging ways to use the concepts of quantum mechanics (not the results of quantum mechanical experiments) to illustrate authentic power, how very different it is from our previous understanding of power, and what is necessary to create it.

The scientist of the soul is a new kind of scientist that the new multisensory human consciousness makes possible. It is a scientist who explores her experiences, both collective and individual, with courage and the clear intention to free herself from her fears, cultivate her love and give the gifts that she was born to give.

The physics of the soul requires exploring in meaningful and verifiable ways the fundamental connection between intention and experience, and makes each of us responsible and grateful contributors to life. It is a science that seeks not to validate concepts in the old way, but to reveal the effectiveness and power of awareness and conscious choice, and how to use them in the most constructive and healthy ways possible.

Gary Zukav is the author of four consecutive New York Times bestsellers, including The Seat of the Soul. Zukav and Linda Francis present the workshop Scientist of the Soul: Experiencing the Quantum Leap on April 26-27 in Vancouver. Visit www.seatofthesoul.com.