Science as an institutionalised social activity and scientific theory are in a constant process of change. Development of the sciences in a positive direction requires that they are represented for what they are and can do, neither for more nor less. The aims of universality of knowledge, in which many scientists believe, implies that science must also be inclusive in scope and very broad in approach to reality. Science needs to be able to recruit fresh, unbiassed minds and give room for genuinely new approaches to any question whatever, a state of affairs that is far from being the case. Further, the scientific culture should ideally include and in principle hold all different cultures and belief-systems in respect... rejecting nothing as untrue without the most thorough evidence.

SCIENCE IN ITS PROPER PLACE

Many leading propagators of science behave in a superior way when the scepticism they armour themselves with is turned against scientific claims and aims. When faced with the intellectual shortcomings and contradictions that arise from the self-imposed limitations of physical science, scientists tend to become revanchists. An impression many persons have, unfortunately not without reason, is that many scientists match the pretentions of Middle Age theologists for, if the pronouncements of some scientists are to be taken seriously, then only science can answer any questions of import. By absolutising the physicalist assumption into a dictate, most scientists reject a great deal that is very important and even vital to human understanding. They consequently regard values as 'subjective opinions' and not in any way universal or 'true'. They mostly present a world-view which is supposed to be based entirely on experience, with all the consequences of having a past-oriented mentality, predicting what is likely on the basis of this backward-looking empiricism... in short, intellectual conservatism or ideal-scorning pragmatism.

Another consequence of the public preaching of physicalism or scientism is out-of-hand rejection of evidence that doesn't accord with the current world-view held by scientists in general, denying even the possibility of certain kinds of experience and well-founded beliefs of millions of people. There occur phenomena of various kinds that do not lend themselves to experimental or laboratory situations, or which have so far not been physically registered by instruments. As will be described later, even physical evidence is ignored that scientists frequently presume to know in advance cannot possibly exist.

The method of science is more closely allied to scepticism than faith, and on good historical grounds too in most cases. It has thus been argued that science does not prove its theories, but tries to disprove theories. Karl Popper laid great emphasis on this 'falsificatory' function of science. If it fails to disprove an hypothesis, it accepts it until it is either disproved or something better may come along. This is at least partly true, though it must be said in fairness that great advances in science have come because of the attempt to prove theories as fully as possible. It is a somewhat different matter, evidently, when scientists are challenged with cogent arguments against an accepted body of theory, particularly when these come from scientists outside the pale of general opinion or from non-scientists. The sceptical method in fact leans heavily towards conservatism in practice, rather than to openness, positive new investigation and real scientific advance, all of which are the exception, not the rule.

The imprinted image of science as sound knowledge built on unshakable foundations is zealously protected by science pundits, who maintain either a studied silence about disturbing new hypotheses, or at best a pseudo discussion where arguments are not seriously faced with open-minded intelligence. This is the all too prevalent obscurantism of what can only be identified as 'establishment science'. Mostly not organised through explicit public channels, it is largely decided through informal collegial contacts and the (often unofficial) proclamations of leading opinion-makers within the 'insider' science community. In thus protecting their own professional interests and theories, they often misguidedly suppose that they are doing the same for humanity! Evidently not secure enough philosophically to open to both radically critical evaluations and serious dialogue, many spokesmen of establishment science are constantly heard hailing its current standpoints as the only reasonable intellectual ideology, as if forgetting that the one-time accepted positions in many areas of science are continually being blown away. Occasional professional ire by established scientists in the media gives away this game of dogmatism and vested prestige and interest.

Really radical dissenters to any science's more basic assumptions, accepted facts or theories are mostly barred from serious publications, so they hardly reach most scientists of today. Selective censorship is necessary with badly ill-informed theories and really lunatic ideas, of which there are always more than sufficient. But new discoveries and 'unprecedented' events are ever and again showing how wrong the experts were about what is and is not possible. This occurs not least in nuclear technology and medical drug development, which are supposed to be subjects in which science has the highest levels of certainty, precision and experimental verification.

Supposedly established theories in natural scientific fields like the earth's geological evolution, paleontology, biological evolution and modern physics are full of very doubtful gaps or abysses, into which we shall peer briefly. The historical 'sciences' especially present a narrow and truncated view of the history of mankind. The 'objective' methodology, with the anti-rationalistic viewpoint dictated by narrow assumptions and cultural prejudices, eliminates in advance much of the very information one would ideally seek. Such data on ancient historical questions would surely give the investigation of 'lost' ancient cultures access to many-sided knowledge of a type mostly lost to scientists today with their blunt physicalist instruments. Recorded truth preserved and handed-down in many ways can only be grasped and evaluated by methods of understanding that are far more immediate than that which scientific history allows, and this requires deep, insightful perception which comes through self-understanding and world-embracing experiences combined with an intellect that is itself allowed to range most freely beyond the confines of any single culture. It is the most ancient cultures that suffer most from false Western preconceptions, especially in the East

LAY VS. SCIENTIFIC IGNORANCE & IGNORING HUMAN ERROR

Recorded truth preserved and handed-down in many ways can only be grasped and evaluated by methods of understanding that are far more immediate than the scientific historians' pseudo-understanding allows, and this requires deep intuitive perception which comes through self-understanding and world-embracing experiences combined with an intellect that is itself allowed to range most freely beyond the confines of a single culture.

Relatively very little indeed is known from physical scientific evidence about human life in most epochs before Grecian times. For example, it was regarded a sensation when the well-preserved clothed and equipped body of a hunter was found in the Alps proving that there were such highly developed societies in Europe up to 10,000 years ago. In the case of India's past, much of the dating and evaluations done by British-dominated research prior to and after Independence is evidently false, and there is evidence that it was often falsified so as to minimilise the significance and great age of the most advanced early civilisation known to man compared to that of the British Empire.

The scientist, vowing to rely strictly upon only what can be observed and recorded, tested by systematic corroboration of observations or by controlled experiment, cannot see that our world is an inverted one. In order to do so, one must work systematically on the basis of a model or vision of how a righted world would be. Science does not accept this as part of its theory and method. There is no known, scientifically-recorded model against which to compare the present condition and those of known history, unless we include 'myths' like that of paradise, a golden age, an early 'utopia', an era of truth and so on. The reconstruction of the history of mankind, ever stunted beyond recognition by science's insistence on physical proofs, shows only that the same norms that prevail today have been prevailing in one way and another since records began.

There is growing and sound evidence available in English that the type of ancient Indian 'science' - its psychological subtlety and spiritual simplicity - was superior in achieving many things both mental, material and 'ecological', equal or superior to our much-praised present material science and technology. All agree that the ancient Indians already operated with a time span of astronomical proportions long before the earliest signs of natural science in ancient Greece. It is undeniable that ancient Indian texts present astonishingly exact scientific calculations even by today's latest scientific standards, such as the speed of light, exact size of the smallest particles and the age of the universe.

The Surya Siddhanta, a textbook on astronomy of ancient India - last compiled in 1000 BC, believed by Hindus to be handed down from 3000 BC by aid of complex mnemonic recital methods still known today - computed the earth's diameter to be 7,840 miles, the distance earth - moon as 253,000 miles. These compare to modern measurements resp. as 7,926.7 miles and 252,710 miles for max. dist. moon-earth.

Manu's texts in Sanskrit propounded evolution thousands of years before Lamarck & Darwin. "The first germ of life was developed by water and heat. Man will traverse the universe, gradually ascending and passing through the rocks, the plants, the worms, insects, fish, serpents, tortoises, wild animals, cattle, and higher animals. These are the transformations declared, from the plant to Brahma, which have to take place in the world."

Brihath Sathaka operates with divisions of the time of one day into:- 60 kalas or ghatika - 24 mins each. Subdivided into 60 vikala (24 secs.each) 60 para then into tatpara, then into vitatpara then into ima then into kasha.... the smallest unit, equal to approx. o.ooooooo3 of a second (one 300 millionth).This smallest unit (3 X 10 -8 second) is surprisingly close to the life-spans of certain mesons and hyperons, according to some Western physicist who was interviewed on the BBC World Service in the early 1990s.

Dr. Subhash Kak of Lousiana State University was interviewed on Science In Action BBC World Service, July 17 1998 on his having discovered that the ancient Indians had calculated the speed of light exactly. According to Dr Kak 14¹th century Indian astronomers worked out the speed of light exactly. They also were very close to getting a correct figure for the age of the Universe. Roland Pease asked whether they had remarkable insight, or was this all a remarkable coincidence. This question well illustrated the general incomprehension of Western scientists towards anything but their own kind.

The 14th century 'Rigveda of the Sun' (dated by manuscript age only), says that the sun covers 2,202 yoganas in half a mimesa - which calculates as 300,000 metres a second, fairly exactly the speed of light. Dr. Kak has checked this against the Puranas, finding that this text definitely referred to the speed of light, not the speed of the sun's travel. Further, Kak pointed out that the size and age of the universe are also given, the figures being very close to those given by science today. 8.64 billion years is the figure given for the age of the universe. The professor judges that these are mere coincidences!³

In Indian scriptures, such as the ancient Srimad Bhagavatam, the estimated length of a Day of Brahma was 4,320 million years. That represents one complete cycle of the universe. Argon-dating undertaken some decades ago put the age of the earth at 5,000 million years. The difference is relatively small, the similarity is more amazing than the discrepancy.The Indian thinker Kanada put forward an atomic theory, concluding that light and heat are two forms of the same basic substance.

One need not descend to the unchained speculation of a von Däniken in pointing out that ancient texts of India describe the existence of ancient weapons, vehicles and technology (in metallurgy, electrics, chemistry) which were only recently invented in the West. The most ancient kind of preventive medicine and cure of illnesses prescribed in Ayur Veda is successfully practised for many conditions today, and increasingly so in many parts of the world.

As to whether India's past is so ancient, the primary question for scientific archeologists and palaeontologists is naturally enough why no physical remains and human artefacts have been found to prove claims of civilisation there as far back as 8,000 BC and before. The likelihood is that Indian civilisation existed in times far more ancient than historians can witness by scientifically-based methods. Yet this is ignored due to the limitations of the current assumptions (or pre-judgemental beliefs) that direct the minds of historians who themselves belong to a civilisation which in many vital respects may still be inferior in many important respects.

The age of the Vedas of ancient India, the first scriptures known to mankind, is doubtless much greater than supposed by 'scientific historians'. An authoritative study of the Vedas' internal evidence for the origin and spread of ancient civilisation by the first recognised Westerner to become a Vedashastri and thus to master them, the American David Frawley, throws much light on the shortcomings of historical science. There is reportedly clear evidence of the positions of some stars at the time of the earliest Vedas which, calculating for the precession of the equinoxes, dates these as early as 8,000 B.C. Holistic interpretations of the evidence also weighs strongly in favour of a global catastrophe having taken place, most probably around 10 thousand years ago, when the ice caps receded. This work also demonstrates the tremendous unrecognised influence of ancient Indian on almost all subsequent world culture.⁴

In the West, it is hardly questioned at all that the Bible's Old Testament by and large refers to events that - though probably inaccurately described - actually must have taken place, at least from the time of Abraham and Ur onwards... more than 5,000 years ago. Hebrew scribes are reckoned to have put sacred oral traditions into writing centuries after the events. The same liberality of belief is not accorded to the doubtless yet more ancient Vedas, which the evidence shows were much more firmly based in oral traditions and preserved by a complex cross-checking system of memorising. Yet some historians, in a travesty of objectivity, even date certain Vedic scriptures from the earliest extant manuscripts, sometimes even as late as 1400 A.D. Meanwhile, note that science can say what is possible on the basis of what as been observed as being the case but it cannot tell what is impossible or even therefore what can have been the case.

Above all, then, questions concerning the loss of records and the recording of its history must be faced when considering the enigma of India's past. One perennial problem for historical science is its lack of any substantial evidence about the kingdoms and wars described in the oldest writings, or the alleged existence of a previous 'golden age' of wise men, saints and deities. The world's cultures and religions abound with accounts or stories of times when mankind lived in harmony with itself, with nature and with God, as well as with accounts of a great flood. These legends can be accounted for most easily by having been handed down across many generations. Like all historical material, even in very recent times, such a process of transmission may have been subject to occasional losses, some distortions and even wilful revisions. Yet the weight of evidence for such eras in the very distant past collected from many cultures is very considerable and all common sense insists that it must contain a hard kernel of truth. It comes from almost all the ancient high civilisations and from many simple tribal hunter-gatherer systems, cultures that have mostly had no known or possible contacts within known history. The general tendencies of such accounts, have been lumped together and thought of as one supposed 'paradise myth' to be discredited by scientific sceptics who will not credit the possibility of what cannot be read from known bones, bricks or other artefacts.

The view that a catastrophy and global flood were connected to the last 'retreat' of the ice caps around 8,000 B.C., despite compelling evidence on many fronts, is still rejected out of hand by established geology. There is increasing acceptance of the theory of earth cataclysms in the very distant past, such as at least partially involved where the extinction of dinosaurs were concerned, and the same as a recognised cause of the sudden extinction of the mammoths.

Evidence and explanations that no serious investigator can ignore were provided by the researches of two associates of Einstein in his later life, Immanuel Velikovsky and Charles Hapgood. The history of how the genius Velikovsky was abused by leading scientists is one of what amounts to scientific inquisition, one which is not over yet. Much of the scientific evidence for the catastrophe theory is rounded up in Graham Hancock's best-selling Fingerprints of the Gods, which approaches a very extensive material from a meta-scientific angle in the footsteps of Velikovsky. The views of the established egyptologists are there shown up for their amazing illogicality, pet beliefs and unfounded assumptions. The evidence and evaluations in this book also crowns a whole genre of extra-scientific literature from Immanuel Velikovsky onwards. ⁶ The specious arguments of the chief scientific establishment critic of Velikovsky, the astronomer Carl Sagan, have been shown exhaustively to be highly unscientific in Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky by Charles Ginenthal. Further, most of the hypotheses for which the scientific establishment chose to ostracise Velikovsky have since been proven true due to on-the-spot observations made possible through space exploration.

5. Para-normal phenomena denied: The evidence for a very wide variety of phenomena classed as paranormal events is both world-wide, has existed throughout known history and has in many cases been observed under the strictest of experimental conditions. that are classed as some kind of 'para-psychological' phenomenon.

Why is this kind of research ignored by the great majority of scientists and why are its few investigators so often maligned by proponents of scientism? The first obvious answer that springs to mind is that these phenomena are in principle very seldom physically controllable by the scientist in the laboratory, for they issue from the mind - or from beyond either matter or mind - and most often answer deep human needs. This inner life of people is beyond the pre-set conceptual limits and methods of natural science. Further, if scientists do not have para-psychological experiences themselves, this would go some way to explain their scepticism and uncertainty before phenomena which others know from experience, and understand better than scientists do. Moreover, such phenomena are known to occur less often where persons of excessive mental activity and blunted intuition are involved.

Scientists have traditionally allied themselves against belief in paranormal or psychic events and abilities, even against believing in a psyche as such. This physicalistic bias has persisted until today and has a tremendous inertia of its own. It is so great that, even though paranormal events - and even physically-observable events that defy the known laws of physics - have long been observable by anyone who wishes to seek for them, most commonly in India, where they are well known and quite commonly experienced, not least by many leading Indian scientists.

There are, however, always a number of leading Western scientists who accept the existence of most para-normal events and even research into them. The problem is that these are in a minority and are often not converted to a reasonable understanding until they have had such experiences themselves or are of very mature years. In my judgement, there is also often a psychological explanation: belief in science is sometimes so crucial in providing a sense of security to the individual - as is also the case with religion - that confronting anything that might weaken the basic tenets of that faith is too threatening to those whose life and world is built upon it.

There is plenty of evidence for yogic abilities that far exceed anything medical science regards as possible, while the testimonial evidence fills many volumes. This includes much physical evidence, including physiological studies carried out by leading Western research institutes, such as those Swami Rama demonstrated under laboratory conditions. Many other yogis and swamis can stop their heartbeat and slow their metabolism to very tiny fractions of the normal for very long periods, though they seldom seek publicity - on the contrary. Such feats were documented many times by doctors and officials in India during British rule. Fakirs can chew light bulbs to fragments and swallow the splinters without any abrasions or any ill effects whatever, due to the use of a mantra, an observed fact even in such a place as under close medical observation on T.V. in Norway, for example. Some persons with mantric powers can cure snake-bite at any distance, a fact so well known in India that such persons have been provided with permanent posts by where they can always be summoned by telephone. The possession of so-called siddhic powers - achieved by intense yogic training - are deemed impossible by scientists in general, yet persons with such powers actually do flourish, again chiefly in India, and can even be met and observed in this era without very much difficulty. The main difficulty is to be able to distinguish the very many fraudulent practitioners from the genuine, but it is of course not an impossible task.

Despite the great variety of fraudulence involving claims of paranormal powers of every kind, there nevertheless do occur many indubitable psychic and 'incredible' physical abilities. They tend to arise in the highest potency in India and some other eastern countries, but also in Western cultures, notably Brazil. Paranormal phenomena are witnessed in indisputable public proofs such as in photographs (eg. Kirlian photos), in a wide variety of well-controlled public demonstrations. It has been frequently filmed and demonstrated widely what immense power can be generated to make the human body invulnerable to tremendous forces by breath exercises to concentrate the subtle 'breath' energy, know variously as chi, ki or prana.

One may also easily observe public materialisations of objects especially by Indian swamis and yogis, but above all, in the case of Sri Sathya Sai Baba, who has allegedly materialised tens of thousands of precious gifts for visitors to him. His materialisations have been witnessed daily in public up to the present, after 60 years of continuous production, while he also apparently materialises at a distance large quantities of 'holy substances' on photos and statuettes of divinities in countries all over the globe, which may be viewed and investigated at certain shrines and homes in most countries, and in at least hundreds of instances in India. Some of his innumerable physical and other 'miracles' have been critically examinated by an experimental psychologuist, Prof. Erlandur Haraldsson of Rekjavik University, Iceland.⁷ However, Sai Baba has never submitted himself to any scientific investigation on the grounds that science has no methods capable of investigating or understanding the nature of - and reason for - his productions. Further, there are now a number of reports of him having palmed objects on a number of occasions, especially in recent years. Despite all this, the interest of scientists (apart from some Indian scientists) has been nil in this very widely attested phenomenon, one which if genuine would blow a hole in the basic physicalistic assumption of the physical sciences. That they are not better known to Western science is itself evidence of the prevalence of scientific Besserwissen, which simply assumes that anything its theories are so far from accommodating must be impossible, and therefore regard this as fraud... even before making the simplest of direct investigations. Those scientists who do cross the threshold of ingrained scepticism and who possess real intellectual humility before paranormal phenomena often find themselves looked at with considerable suspicion and even prejudice by their previous colleagues.

Despite an attitude of advance disbelief from prominent spokesmen of science, there is an increasingly broad and convincing contemporary evidence to validate the continuation of consciousness after death from 'temporary death' experiences. Then there is the carefully documented research into controllable reincarnational memories in children. Even sound proof of reincarnation, through scientifically-controlled investigation of children who can remember and describe in detail a 'previous life' - such as in Sri Lanka and India - is available but is disregarded. In India, where events proving reincarnation are legion, a very well-known case occurred when a court in New Delhi convicted a man of murder on 16/1/1989 on evidence first pointed out by his reborn victim, a 6-year old boy who remembered his previous life and the murderer!⁸The long-term serious investigations of doctors and anthropologists at the University of Virginia into reincarnational evidence in over 2,600 cases of persons showing signs of reincarnation, makes the hypothesis highly likely to be valid. What would constitute ultimate proof here is some question, but the evidence is so strong that the hypothesis is certainly not invalidated, rather the contrary. Thus, Dr. Almeder of Georgia State University, an authority on the evidence, said that the argument for reincarnation is a straightforward scientific question, one for which we have as much evidence as we have for the existence in the past of dinosaurs. A number of other researchers have produced startling evidence for reincarnation. ⁹

Despite the existence of major world-wide evidence of cases of precognition, as well as laboratory demonstrations of it, it is commonly denied as possible by the majority of scientists who remark on the subject? The same goes for so-called synchronicities, which are 'coincidences' that break all possible statistical 'laws'... the simultaneous co-occurrence of two events that cannot therefore be related causally and often take place over large distances. Such are experienced very frequently by countless numbers of people, including the present author, and have been recorded since the dawn of history.

How can one explain such scientific blindness? If it were due to science not having been able to explain in physical terms how it occurs or could occur, then surely it should be a challenge to seekers of truth? The then the same goes for hypnosis and a host other well-recorded phenomena... science has no conception whatever of the physics involved. Yet there are even scientists who deny in the media that hypnosis actually occurs, trying to explain it away by bizarre means almost as remarkable as what hypnotised persons can get up to.

I am not here offering any specific explanations of these various phenomena, simply noting their undeniable existence on very considerable scale. It is not a question of belief, but willingness to investigate with an open mind. Because phenomena are unexplained, however, it doesn't mean that they can be explained by the most improbable of theories, such as we witness in the new belief of Stephen Hawking that it is theoretically possible to travel physically backwards in time or, for that matter, in the UFO literature, such as alleged alien visitors and abductors. It is paradoxical that otherwise intelligent people will not investigate facts but prefer to retreat from reality into theoretical and speculative fantasy.

The literature on para-normal and para-psychological phenomena of many well-recorded and often fairly well-researched varieties, however, is so great on a world-wide basis that sound recommendation of specific works in preference to others would itself involve a considerable explanation. To disregard all such challenges to the basic assumptions of physicalism - like the existence of a separable soul or consciousness - is surely to hinder the progress of humanity, let alone science. The truth seems unfortunately to be that science is chronically unable to explain them and consequently by far the most scientists evidently do not want such things to exist or to allow anyone to believe that they do! Such wilful ignorance is quite the opposite of the original spirit of science.

The existence of many dissenters and much literature, especially from outside the orthodox professional scientific community, make the failure of established science to confront these questions squarely the more remarkable.