| I’d like to build
on the installment of my column that was published in
the July-August issue. In that piece I described how I’d
gotten cross-wise with a segment of the listening audience
of KUNC public radio after the station aired a couple
of my commentaries in which I described a study that suggested
the possibility of direct mind-to-mind communication.
Now I feel on the spot to explain where I really do stand
vis-à-vis spiritual and paranormal stuff.
The controlling metaphor for my view of the relationship
between the spiritual world and the physical one comes
from an old friend, an Orthodox Jew and a physician, whom
I met early in my medical career. Benyomin, a studious
and righteous man, gifted me with the following worldview.
What we can see of the Universe is similar to what you’d
see if you were to take a thin cross-sectional slice midway
up a tree, preserving the pieces on a large sheet of glass,
each in relationship to the others. Where there was a
leaf, you’d see a thin green line. A twig would
leave a brown linear trace; a small branch a small and
a larger branch a bigger oval. The trunk would show a
complex shape of concentric patterns of bark and growth
rings.
At a glance, and certainly after careful study, these
traces would suggest that they were part of some larger
structure. But, without a God’s-eye overview, we
finite creatures, limited to the two-dimensional array
of pieces we can actually see, could only imagine something
like a tree behind the reality of the lines and smudges
that lie on the plate of glass. As a scientist, this metaphor
appeals to me greatly. It points to a wondrously mysterious
Universe without committing to anything supernatural.
But it’s not like the natural world is easy. Consider
the saying, “Seeing is believing,” keeping
in mind what a tiny piece of the electromagnetic spectrum
our eyes actually perceive. What we call “visible
light” is a small range of frequencies that Earth’s
atmosphere happens to be transparent to. Evolution has
taken as full advantage as possible in constructing biological
visual systems, including the human one, out of carbon-based
building blocks. Everything else, from radio, television,
microwave, and infrared on the long side, to ultraviolet,
x-rays and gamma-rays on the short side, is invisible
to our eyes.
It’s only been about a century, beginning with Marconi’s
radio waves, since we humans have become aware of so much
of the radiation that inundates us every moment. Without
a radio, television or cell phone we still don’t
have a clue about the gazillions of messages that we bathe
in. What exactly does “seeing is believing”
mean today in the context of what we now know about the
electromagnetic spectrum? Thanks to science and technology,
we can “see” way more of the Universe than
our great-great-grandparents could even begin to imagine.
Quantum physics posits plenty of aspects of reality that
are not only imperceptible, but are downright unimaginable,
like vacuums frothing with spontaneously created and destroyed
particles and branching pathways of reality. Despite nearly
a century of striving, we still don’t have a “theory
of everything” to unite the forces of quantum physics
with the force of gravity. Even if we did, such a theory
could provide us no more than an outline upon which to
hang the irreducible uncertainties of the probabilistic
Universe.
There seems to be an infinitely complex border between
determinism and chance that traces the gloriously complex,
yet somehow coherent picture that we carry in our minds
and call our world. What we actually perceive of the Universe,
(including what we perceive with our senses maximally
extended by the techniques of science), is still just
a tiny fraction of what’s out there, similar in
extent, when compared to the whole, to the range of visible
light or the bits of the tree on the sheet of glass.
To be sure, Benyomin, a deeply religious man, saw the
tree as evidence of the existence of a God who gives life
to the Universe. I, on the other hand, don’t need
to see anything more than a suggestion of levels of order
and connection in our world that we sometimes dimly perceive,
vaguely sense or just plain believe have to be there.
There may even be room for direct mind-to-mind communication
in such a connected Universe.
Now it’s time to bring the subject around to something
medical which is, after all, the reason my editor lets
me write a column for Nexus. What good does this
particular worldview do me as a doctor? First of all,
it helps me to cope with tragedy by letting me believe
that, though often unperceived, there are layers of meaning
to everything, even to the suffering and death of innocents
that it is so often my misfortune (and blessing) to be
a part of.
Secondly, the tree metaphor helps me to keep being a scientist
without being only a scientist. Science is very good at
answering a limited but important subset of questions
about human life and health. While reminding me that rationally
exploring the images on the plate glass is a critical
aspect of my job, the idea of the tree doesn’t restrict
me from employing the intuitive sense of underlying structure
that I get when I open myself to patients and their world,
more in the way of meditating than of reasoning.
It’s been years since I’ve spoken to Benyomin.
Still, I feel pretty sure that we are both leaves on the
same tree, probably on the same branch.
Marc Ringel has spent the majority of his career as
a family doctor working in rural communities, including
the last 12 years in Brush, Colorado. He has written extensively,
for lay and professional audiences, about rural health,
medical informatics and healing. Marc lives in Greeley
with his wife and many pets.
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2008 FEATURE ARTICLES
