As I mentioned in my last blog there has been a resurgence in interest in The Perennial Philosophy. One of the leading anti-materialist philosophers is Bernardo Kastrup who posits the Idealist Hypothesis ‘that Self and world are manifestations of spatially unbound universal consciousness or mind. All reality unfolds in a form of transpersonal consciousness’. The Idea of the World

Ontology is defined as the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being, the study of what is, the essence of inner nature. Kastrup notes: ‘I am simply recognizing that experience necessarily entails a subjective field of potential or actualized qualities. That Which Experiences (TWE) is this field. TWE is an ontological primitive, uncaused and irreducible. TWE is associated with the entire universe… So universal consciousness is that within which all creation happens and out of which all creation is made.’

In 1943 the American psychologist Abraham Maslow put forward his hierarchy of humanity’s desires and needs: at the top were self-realisation and transcendence, which he equated with a desire to reach the infinite.

Pim van Lommel is a Dutch cardiac surgeon. He has conducted extensive surveys of the near-death experiences (NDEs) of patients who survived cardiac arrest since 1986. These were all people who were declared brain dead. And yet some of them retained very clear memories of what they experienced in their bodies during that time and/or what happened to them in another space while they were ‘dead’. He writes ‘An NDE is both an existential crisis and an intense learning experience. People are transformed by the glimpse of a dimension where time and space play no role, where past and future can be viewed, where they feel complete and healed, and where infinite wisdom and unconditional love can be experienced... After an NDE, people realize that everything and everybody are connected, that every thought has an impact on oneself and others, and that our consciousness survives physical death.’ Consciousness Beyond Life

This relates to Kastrup’s notion of meta cognition, which means you can be aware that you are aware of having an experience. So, for example, when you are in the throes of despair you can evaluate that ‘I am having a moment of despair’. The more of your own thoughts and emotions you can bring under the lens of meta cognition, the more aware you become. You can observe the experiences and evaluate them. And of course for centuries many forms of meditation have focused on raising meta cognition. You don’t identify with the emotions, the experiences, you are the observer of the emotions.

Despite the science of non-locality and Idealism gradually being recognised, and despite the ancient desire across cultures for transcendence and unity with the infinite, means to realise this are still discouraged in our materialistic culture.

As Graham Hancock writes, It is ‘exceedingly strange that Western civilization in the 21st century enjoys no real freedom of consciousness.

There can be no more intimate and elemental part of the individual than his or her own consciousness. At the deepest level, our consciousness is what we are - to the extent that if we are not sovereign over our own consciousness, then we cannot in any meaningful sense be sovereign over anything else either. So it has to be highly significant that, far from encouraging freedom of consciousness, our societies in fact violently deny our right to sovereignty in this intensely personal area and have effectively outlawed all states of consciousness other than those on a very narrowly defined and officially approved list.’ Divine Spark

One of the exercises I offer is ‘Who am I’? as a first step to acknowledging we are not victims, we have choice, and helping to vision the path of joy, love, abundance and service that you would like to live from your Higher Self as drops in the sea of Universal Consciousness.