When Two Worlds Collide
Trying to collaborate across the Academic-Layperson Partition
The Order of Civilization
I am an engineer. My temperament is analytical in the sense that my first response to information is to examine its validity to see if it is useful. That pragmatic worldview has guided me toward an explanatory model of etheric-physical influences, such as clairvoyance and Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC). I refer to the model as the Pragmatic Model of Reality.
By “pragmatic,” I intend information that helps a person understand what I think of as the Seeker’s Way. The Seeker’s Way is characterized by three questions a person seeking spiritual maturity learns to ask while living life:
What is the nature of reality?
What is my nature?
What is my relationship with reality?
The natural order leading to civilization can be characterized as:
Scientists observe nature and develop theoretical models of understanding.
Engineers consider those models and use their guidance to develop products intended to help citizens live a more fruitful life.
Citizens test those products through daily use and provide feedback to scientist and engineers enabling improved products.
Along the way, citizens support institutions that train and support scientists and engineers. Pragmatically, the consider-apply-test cycle is arguably the foundation of civilization.
Note the similarity of the Seeker’s three questions and the consider-apply-test cycle.
And then there is philosophy
Helping lead the Association TransCommunication (ATransC) has taught me to focus on Psi related phenomena, especially ITC. Focusing on what I refer to as Consciousness and Psi Studies was necessary as part of my duty to help members work with ITC. However, that study has put me in paradigm limbo. Mainstream science still largely denies the existence of Psi. The parapsychological community claims responsibility for the academic study of Psi. Parapsychology is dominated by academic psychologists and philosophers who typically study the phenomena of Psi as an emergent characteristic of the brain.
Parapsychologists tend to treat ITC as illusion in much the same manner that mainstream academia treats the Psi phenomena parapsychologists study. After 25+ years of trying to collaborate with parapsychologists, I turned to philosophical Idealism as a possible community for collaboration. As I see it, the Pragmatic Model is an objective model of Idealism.
The Essentia Foundation seems to be a well-organized group that supports thought that is meaningful to philosophical Idealism. It appears to have been founded by Bernardo Kastrup who has been busy establishing himself as the public face of what he refers to as Analytic Idealism.
Comment: Here I should say that there is a disconnect between the philosophical frame of reference and my engineer’s frame of reference. (See Predictions of the Pragmatic Model of Reality: Frame of Reference) To me, words used in philosophy fail to convey intended meaning to my engineer’s mind. To me, they are not anchored in the objective references I recognize. Yet, the concepts they convey are simple and useful if normalized to engineer-speak.
The Foundation accepts article submissions. Besides the usual requirement of scholarly content, articles must not exceed 3,000 words. Diagrams are not allowed. As an engineer, half of my communication is with diagrams—think circuit schematics or blueprints. So, I wrote a version of A Pragmatic Model of Reality without diagrams and under 3K words.
I mailed it to the indicted email address, and after three weeks of not even an acknowledgement that they received it, I sent them a note to withdraw the essay.
While the Essentia website includes:
Essentia Foundation is not philosophically neutral: we were created precisely to address an imbalance in how the metaphysical implications of results from science and philosophy are communicated by the media.
The articles on the Essentia website cover a wide range of topics, many of which are based on some pretty philosophical “what if” notions rather than substantive theory. I felt there was a chance my essay would fit in. I also knew that my engineer’s approach might be like a foreign language, even nonsensical to the Essential people. And yes, I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering while the majority of articles are written by Ph.Ds.
To be fair, the Foundation probably receives too many submissions and cannot respond to every one. There is also the implicit expectation that, like most of the contributing authors, acceptable submissions will be written by philosophers or from the mind-related sciences. As with BICS, my submission was a longshot. See My (unselected) BICS Entry: Case for the Survival Hypothesis.
I did not expect rude.
You can read the paper here.
Lessons Learned
It is important for the model to be considered by trained thinkers who are familiar with Psi phenomena. Especially considering my age (82), it is important for the model to be tested, if only because it is possible that I have talked myself into thinking nonsense is sensible. While living, I can still explain the model. Once I am not, the model will quickly disappear.
Any model of reality needs to address the implications of nonlocality, a purposeful reality and the influence of worldview on perception. Those are more than conceptual. They are part of the explanation for the more objective Psi phenomena, especially ITC.
Since my early efforts in 2000 to collaborate with the parapsychological community, like Pavlov’s dog, I have learned that most psychology and philosophy Ph.Ds. are Physicalists at heart. In practice, they tend to obstruct progress in parapsychology by always guiding the community toward brain-based explanations of phenomena.
Paradoxically, the people who think most about the nature of reality seem to have the most difficulty seeing the need to answer the Seeker’s questions in a pragmatic way that is most useful for citizens.
I cannot fix this. Perhaps it is up to you.