Printed in the Winter 2020 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Clewell, Andre, "Revisiting Theosophical Science" Quest 108:1, pg 9
By Andre Clewell
The subtitle of The Secret Doctrine is The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy. H.P. Blavatsky devoted numerous pages in this work to the scholarly assessment of the science that was current in 1888. Since that time, great strides have been made demonstrating the connections between spirituality and science. Dean Radin of the Institute of Noetic Sciences has done much to bring this union to popular attention in several books, including Supernormal and Real Magic. In particular, Radin described research, published in reputable, peer-reviewed, scientific journals, which confirms that consciousness exists apart from the brain and body.
Spiritual traditions have long recognized an independently existing consciousness and variously designated it as spirit, soul, and psyche. Consequently, independently occurring consciousness, by whatever term it may be designated, is now accessible for scientific investigation. Such research will not be easy. Nobody, neither scientists nor Theosophists, can crisply define what consciousness is. We only know some of its attributes. But that impediment should not be daunting; physicists can’t define energy either, except as how it affects matter.
Nearly all scientists ignore the published research, which establishes that consciousness can be extracorporeal. Such an admission would ruin their careers, and we will have to wait until their curious graduate students join the professorial ranks. Concomitantly, nearly all Theosophists have lost all but a passing interest in science since Blavatsky’s time. We may have to wait for the next generation of Theosophists to emerge before scientific interest will be rekindled as brightly as it was in 1888.
The Theosophical Society is saddled with a sticky conundrum if we attempt to meld science and Theosophy. The problem is that the science in The Secret Doctrine is hopelessly out of date. We just can’t jettison what Blavatsky wrote 132 years ago, because the entire edifice of Theosophy was constructed on its foundations. Academic scholars would gleefully attack us if we discredited passages in this work. Perhaps we can take a page from science and simply ignore the fantastic, outdated, and erroneous parts.
We are caught in a bind of our own making, because we will have to reinterpret what the Masters taught and state their concepts in modern parlance. If we are successful, bounteous truth and solid principles will remain. We will have to make a convincing argument, though, that seemingly erroneous information given to early Theosophists by the Masters is valid only in terms of archaic Victorian science. The Masters answered the questions that were asked of them in a manner that would be understood in the 1880s and not in the twenty-first century. We would ask them different questions today and receive very different answers based on contemporary knowledge.
We need accessible yet scholarly books authored by scientists who can explain clearly to other scientists (or their graduate students!) the plethora of scientific questions that bear investigation now that consciousness has been set free from the brain. I suggest Rupert Sheldrake’s book Science Set Free as an excellent model for this effort.
Andre Clewell, PhD, is president of the Tallahassee Study Group and of the MidSouth Federation of the TSA.