Consciousness and World View

I’ve been reading a book from the Institute of Noetic Sciences – IONS – titled “Living Deeply.” It’s a study of the process of transformation in people’s lives, the kind of transformation that is life changing because it changes our consciousness, or our world view.

The authors define consciousness as how we perceive the world, including both our conscious and unconscious perceptions. Then they make this comment: “To a great extent, our worldview determines what we’re capable of seeing, and therefore determines our perception of reality.”

They illustrate this with an example from the life of Charles Darwin. As a young man Darwin hunted for fossils with a geologist, Adam Sedgwick, in the valleys and gorges which they thought had been created by the Biblical great Flood. Both of them completely missed the obvious signs of glacial activity all around them – the scratched rocks, the moraines, etc. Darwin later said that the signs were so conspicuous that they might as well have labels on them. It’s a great example of how even two observant scientists can miss the obvious if it doesn’t conform to their world view.

We see that today, as Dean Radin points out in “Entangled Minds”, when otherwise brilliant scientists insist that non-local properties of the mind are bogus, in spite of mountains of research to the contrary.

Of course, this effect on the theology side is also quite well documented. People can spout nonsense without even hearing themselves, so powerful is their world view. Here’s an example from our local paper, which runs articles from various preachers on Fridays. The writer was deploring “modern theology” for having departed from the Bible, which in his opinion was clear and easily understood by anyone who could read. He asserted:

“It would seem strange to any honest heart that a metaphorical sign would be used to confirm a reality. The truth of the matter is Jesus did die, was buried on Friday and rose on Sunday morning. Those who know and understand the Bible understand Jesus was in the grave for three literal days and three literal nights.”

In this case his world view, or consciousness, interfered with his ability to count to three. Since the Bible accounts tell us that Jesus was buried around sundown on Friday, and raised before dawn on Sunday, counting that as three literal days is a stretch. It’s only 48 hours. But, heck, it’s parts of three days, so we’ll let him stretch it. But there is no way to get three nights, and he seems oblivious of that fact!

That’s exactly the kind of world view induced blindness that Darwin suffered, and from which we all suffer. The ancient person who first noted that humility is a virtue had probably just gotten caught in it. It’s a reminder to bring “beginner’s mind” to every new idea.

Tagged as: Christianity, consciousness, mind, perception