Recovering the Soul

In 1992 I met Dr. Greer. I told him that I aspired to be a Working Group Coordinator in his CE-5 Initiative. He suggested that I read Larry Dossey MD’s “Recovering the Soul.” I offer fellow contact workers these notes to help guide them in their work.

The theory of mind proposed by Dossey is one in which consciousness is described as non-local. Non-locality in this context means having the property of being independent of time and space. Defenders of the concept of the non-local mind assert that it is analogous to a strange property of physics at sub-atomic levels.

Quantum mechanics is the theory that describes how electrons spin around the nucleus of any atom. The orbits of these sub-atomic particles according to quantum theory can never be known with absolute certainty. An investigator can know either the location of an electron as it spins around the atom, or its velocity, but both of these properties can never be known simultaneously with certainty. Instead of an exact location and a specific velocity, probabilities are assigned to electrons’ locations depending on their energies. This property of not being able to designate the exact location and speed is known as non-locality.

Traditional Western science asserts that the mind is strictly limited by both time and space. A mind, any mind is restricted to the specific brain activity of one individual. According to mainstream science then, the time limits for any person’s mind range from lasting a single moment, or encompassing a lifetime, but no more. Death occurs when brain electrical activity ceases. According to Western science when the brain dies the mind is obliterated, nothing is left. There is no consciousness after the brain dies. Crudely stated in the materialistic paradigm, every living being is just a brain locked up inside a skull. The human body is merely a bag of skin containing organs, blood and bones.

The non-local theory asserts that mind transcends the mental activity of the brain. The mind is not destroyed when the brain dies. Instead consciousness is free from any limitations of space and can be found across the universe. Mind should then be capable of accessing all time, past, present and future. From this expanded view of consciousness, we get a sense how psychic phenomenon works. Mind to mind communication is then the logical consequences of non-local mind that is free to roam the universe. Precognition and remote viewing the acquisition of accurate knowledge of present and future events are also manifestations of mind not restricted by time or place.

Thus from the non-local point of view, mind is something that is timeless, space less and immortal. This describes an entity that resembles what we think of as the Soul. Thus according to Dr. Dossey recovering the non-local nature of the mind is essentially a recovery of the soul.

As Dr. Greer has taught during his many of seminars preparing contact workers to become cosmic diplomats, consciousness is simply the experience of being awake and being aware of this wakefulness. It is being aware of awareness.

As we are know from directly experiencing our own mental activity, there are many levels of consciousness. In western psychology these levels of consciousness are often viewed as three states, the unconscious, the preconscious and the conscious. Rather than just limiting our view of mental activity to these strictly defined categories, it may be more helpful to view consciousness as a spectrum. In eastern philosophy such as Buddhism or Taoism, this spectrum of consciousness can be said to span from the primitive thoughts of an infant who has not yet developed a sense of self separate from the mother, all the way up to the towering pinnacle of human consciousness that mystics tell us is unity with the Divine, or as stated by Dr. Greer is “God consciousness.”

In his preface to “Recovering the Soul” Dr. Dossey quotes 1963 Nobel Prize winning neurophysiologist Sir John Eccles who studied the way in which nerve impulses are transmitted across synapses.

“Man has lost his way ideologically in this age…. Science has gone too far in breaking down man’s belief in his spiritual greatness…. and has given him the belief that he is merely an insignificant animal that has arisen by chance and necessity in an insignificant planet lost in the great cosmic immensity.” (The Human Psyche, New York, Springer International 1980 p.25)

Larry Dossey MD then states his view that ultimately the local concept of mind so popular in certain scientific circles is ultimately destructive because it denies the possibility of realizing the interconnectedness of all minds, people and things. He postulates that

“ If nonlocal mind is a reality, the world becomes a place of interaction and connection, not of isolation and conjunction. And if humanity really believed that nonlocal mind was real, an entirely new foundation for ethical and moral behavior would enter…. the possibility of a radical departure from the insane ways human beings and nation states have chronically behaved toward each other.”

I encourage all contact workers to follow Dr. Greer’s suggestion and to review Dr. Dossey’s “Recovering the Soul.”

Dr. Joseph Burkes
www.contactunderground.com