Spirit and Body in Cooperation
At one time our culture decided to divide our world in two spheres. These are called spirit and body, body and soul, or material and immaterial. Now, Wolfgang Pauli says that both spheres have to be brought together. For in order to form and use matter I need an idea, but this is immaterial. Therefore, the immaterial has to be connected with matter in order for one to be productive as a human being. From this connection a holistic sphere arises in which the archetypes should be at home. In this process the sphere of the soul gives the idea, and the physical sphere the law. Thus, the two sides belong together.
The example of the atom presents that some terms are archetypical for humanity. What actually is an atom? We do not know exactly. Sometimes we say wave, sometimes we say particle. Besides, we know that the term “atom” is totally irrational. Basically atom means “inseparable”. But for more than 100 years already we can divide it, but we still cling to this word. There have been several trials in the history of science to cease using this word, but in vain. It is archetypical.
It is the same with energy. Who really knows what energy is? In the textbook we find as the first sentence: “We can do everything with energy. We can transform, send and pay for it, we can make it more expensive or cheaper. We only cannot say what it is.” Energy also seems to be something archetypical, and we have to understand it as something without which I cannot even form a scientific theory.
In 1962, the science historian Thomas Kuhn published a book with the title: “The Structure of Scientific Revolution”. In the book he subdivided the scientific undertaking into one which functions normally and another one which is revolutionary.
According to Karl Popper, the normal scientific undertaking functions as follows: For example you want to write a degree dissertation. First you form a hypothesis and afterwards you do an experiment. Hypothesis and experimental journal you hand in, and for this you receive your diploma. And this is called scientific work, and henceforth you are called a scientist.
I don’t find this procedure especially stimulating, and for the layman it is mostly totally uninteresting. This logical procedure is always under a paradigm which is very limiting. Paradigm is a nice word for presuppositions and suppositions which all agree to – how boring! One could maliciously say: A paradigm is to be slow on the uptake. In this state everyone does research hoping that sometimes someone is getting a new idea. It is exactly this which leads to a basic consent which makes the spirit immobile, and you don’t shake it if you do normal science. Basically, you only collect facts which serve the paradigm.
But what creates the exciting, the revolutionary ideas, which you also can discover in science from time to time?
Why do great discoveries appear under very primitive scientific conditions? This revolution develops through a revelation, through a sudden insight. Unfortunately, the term “a scientific revolution” is very frequently used. At almost every scientific congress it is used today in order to increase the research budget. Strangely enough we hate revolutions in our daily bourgeois life. Therefore, we love revolutions in scientific life. The only question is how much time one needs to bring up the scientific paradigm up to the latest state of knowledge.
Often, three scientific generations are necessary for this: the teacher of the old paradigm and two further generations of pupils of this teacher. Sometimes, smaller paradigms can work faster. To doubt the basic structure of today’s scientific undertaking is very problematic. The fear of change is seated too deeply if you have to firmly establish yourself as a scientist.
But what can you call a revolution? By definition it is something that leads you back to the origin. Thus, you make a rotation, even if you come out at the same place, but at a higher level, just like in a spiral.
But one idea alone is not a revolution yet. You need a social feedback of the other scientists, otherwise they continue in the same fashion as before in spite of the new idea. It is only a revolution in science if firstly the idea is tested, secondly agreed to, thirdly written down in a textbook, fourthly accepted by the students and fifthly if it becomes a mutual praxis in science. It is a long way which could take three decades or longer. It is not for nothing that many Nobel Prize Winners have aged considerably before they get the prize.
But the interesting thing is the point where a new idea is born in the discoverer. The prerequisite is the courage for a creative science.
The creative science is different from the normal science!
In normal research, usually the driving force is a demand which is brought from the outside due to some conditions. For example, an effective cancer remedy should be developed because worldwide more and more people die of the effects as well as the attempted therapy measures of this disease. The above mentioned machinery starts. Creative progress cannot be achieved in science this way. In creativity, suddenly a new picture appears in front of the mental eye that wants to be put into action.
But who is ready to accept this new idea in this kind of scientific undertaking, if research budgets are short and are planned years ahead? Thus, a pitiful smile of the normal scientists remains for the creative odd person.
Mostly the creative thoughts come suddenly, after one has thought about a certain problem mentally for quite a while.
As the first scientist, the Berlin physicist, philosopher and physiologist Hermann Helmholtz clearly formed the law of conservation of energy in 1847. He also discovered physical laws about sound sensations and colors, and with this, optical and physiological sense perceptions. 1891 he described his sudden ideas:
“Ideas appear suddenly without stress like an inspiration, but first I had to turn my problem over in all directions so I recognized all turns and complexities in my head and could let them run freely without writing them down… Often the ideas were there in the morning when waking up.”
Also, the great mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss describes the ideas in the morning in 1835:
“The induction law was found before getting up on 23rd January at 7 o’clock in the morning.”
Helmholtz alludes to the citation by Goethe with the following:
“What a person did not know or did not think about walks around the laboratory of the chest during the night.”
Also, the discovery of the benzene ring by the chemist August Kekulé, which he described in the year 1868 and which brought a tremendous progress in the chemical industry, was based on creative ideas. Kekulè slept in front of his fireplace in 1865 and described the situation as follows:
“Again atoms danced in front of my eyes. Small groups modestly stayed in the background. Long rows, much denser, everything moving, snake-like and winding. And: What was that? A snake bit its own tail and deridingly the formation spun in front of my eyes. I awoke by a seeming lightning. And also this time I spent the rest of the night to work out the consequences of the hypothesis.”
Did he see the ring structure of the benzene ring? No! He saw the archetypical model of the Uroboros. This is the snake which bites its own tail and is an important symbol in alchemy. The alchemy was – as “general chemistry” – the pre-runner of our today’s modern inorganic and organic chemistry.
Was Kekulé an alchemist in his former life, and the flames of his fireplace reminded him of the oven of the alchemists, the Athanor, where one spent day and night in order to sensitively direct the temperatures of the distillation processes?
A further example stems from the year 1965, from the Frenchman François Jacob. In his laboratory at the Paris Pasteur Institute he discovered how genetic regulations happen, after a 10-year study of this subject. He wrote in his autobiography:
“I walk up and down in my office and think about vague hypotheses and possible experiments. A little disgruntled, we go to the movie in the late afternoon. Leaning back in my armchair I feel how my thought processes continue by themselves. I close my eyes and wonder what happens inside. Suddenly, I feel a joyful excitement waking up in me and a sudden flash. It is too obvious.”
The law of conservation of energy is an archetype. It cannot be abandoned, as many other physicists of the former time were ready to do. Heisenberg felt this very clearly at this point. Now comes the decisive moment for Heisenberg:
“Then I noticed that there is no guarantee that the way of development of the mathematical subject can even be done without contradiction. Especially it was totally uncertain if the law of conservation of energy is still valid within this scheme. And I was not allowed to ignore the fact that without the law of conservation of energy the total scheme would be valueless. I had the feeling to look through the surface of the atomic appearances on a deeper level of strange inner beauty, and I almost became dizzy with the thought that I had to follow up the abundance of mathematical structures which nature showed me below.”
Here you recognize the modesty of a scientist who knows exactly that he functions as a channel for such thoughts which are not only of his own doing. Such intuitions scientists, who are full of themselves and proclaim that they have understood the world, will never get to know.
Each of us can have such experiences if he is ready to open himself, to reduce his Ego, and to become one with the creation, with gratitude.
Further information can be found by the reader in my books with the title: “Textbook on the Development of Awareness” or “The Subtle Naturopathy”.
Taken from Paracelsus “Health & Healing”, IX/2 December 2011
Contact Address:
Prof. E.H. Iwailo Schmidt BGU
Healing Practitioner and Lecturer for Naturopathy
Dora-Stock-Str. 1
01217 Dresden
Tel.+49(0)3514-71 75 68
info@naturheilpraxis-i-schmidt.de
www.naturheilpraxis-i-schmidt.de
Literature:
Iwailo Schmidt, The Subtle Naturopathy (Die feinstoffliche Naturheilkunde), Private Publishing House, Dresden 2007
Iwailo Schmidt, Textbook of Bio-Energetics (Lehrbuch der Bioenergetik), Private Publishing House, Dresden 2006
Iwailo Schmidt, Textbook of Ideational Realization (Lehrbuch der Bewusstwerdung), Private Publishing House, Dresden 2007
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