Shamanism for the Age of Science: Awakening the Energy Body - Kenneth Smith 2018

Closure
Closing in on Fundamentalism

Closure, an effect of conditional fields, is a significant force. The biologic closed electrical circuits of the body reflect this innate aspect of humans. The Law of Closure reveals a psychological counterpart; it pertains to defining, refining, eliminating, and consolidating perception.² The study of reading, for example, has shown that if a group of people is presented with a paragraph that has one word blanked out, most people read the paragraph and automatically insert a word, then swear there was no blank spot. In the same manner, a person will interpret what is heard in keeping with his or her own thoughts, even though what is being said might mean something entirely different.

This magnifies to a point where we regard the human world as the essence of the universe rather than a part of it. People anthropomorphize reality by giving human traits to elements of nature, God, or anything else. The social world then becomes the principal navigational tool rather than orienting to the call of the great beyond. This effect of arranging perception limits the number of external emanations that can be tapped, which prevents everyone from becoming more aware. And so we collapse the sea of infinity in which we sail into something convenient, even trivial.

This also serves to reveal what happens when the unconscious begins to surface. The property of closure causes our conscious awareness to either disregard new perceptions or place them in a known category. The effect is the same: the conscious domain remains static. The good thing about this is that our energy bodies don’t explode due to an overload of awareness rushing in. The downside is not recognizing more of our natural heritage. The barriers of perception are all forms of closure, with each barrier expressing closure in a different way. At the same time, growth to another level requires closing off obsolete prior behaviors.

The contrast between science and scientism serves to illumine the benefits and drawbacks of the open-close dynamic of awareness. Science is based on a rigorous method of inquiry with a continual push into the unknown. Scientism reflects consensual activities where thoughts about scientific knowledge are given more weight than the method that brought about the knowledge in the first place. Awareness and understanding from scientific endeavors change all the time, with new knowledge routinely replacing what has come before. Scientism surfaces when scientists no longer extend scientific considerations to all areas of inquiry and either remain locked in a previous model or try to force data into an inappropriate model; the door to true investigation then closes.

For example, a novel therapeutic agent that has been shown to effectively and safely treat disease may not pass laboratory analysis because the model being used to test efficacy relies on looking only at biological pathways used by the current class of drugs. But the new therapeutic agent might work differently than what has come before. If the requirements that the new drug must face before approval inherently discount their effects, the drug may never see the light of day. The evolution of models goes hand-in-hand with discovery.

In respect to bioenergetics, mystical experience, or a more extensive human anatomy, it is not that science is incapable of tackling the issues; it is that a sufficient number of scientists have not yet completely recognized new areas to explore. These areas are therefore often relegated to philosophy, the fringes of scientific endeavor, or the ranting of pop culture. The same applies to all behavior. Educators, for instance, can ask people to learn and accept the same, unchallenged norms or they can provide the essentials to enable people to actively learn, no matter how threatening this may seem to the teacher. What those requirements might be result from style and method. They are part of the artistic element of one’s craft and are expressed as a given situation warrants.

In and of itself, the scientific method stands as an amazingly powerful tool. In essence, it represents objectivity. Optimally, scientific models provide a means for valuable determinations to account for new data and new revelations about the world. In practice, results are biased by what is currently held to be scientific. As interpretations directly hinge on cohesion, two people could read or observe the same data yet arrive at completely different meanings. Gathering information through the cornerstones of perception other than reason is not even considered. The method has to be applied before it yields results, and the type of results hinge on the level of skill—with the cooperation of learning and imagination defining the level.

For good and ill, closure is accentuated by group consensus, which lends mass and momentum. Simple rules of physics demonstrate that the inertia of a larger body makes it more difficult to change path. This forms the basis of a bioenergetic interpretation of why cultures often die; they are unable to change quickly enough to avoid natural disaster, war, atmospheric and weather conditions, or whatever else places them in jeopardy. Conversely, in his book Integral Health, physician Elliot Dacher points the way to a culture steeped in wisdom, one that takes advantage of what has been learned yet remains open to whatever waits. The result, he says, is human flourishing.³

While closure is required to consolidate gains of learning and for the application of knowledge, the trick is to remain open in the midst of tying off what is known. Imagination provides this relief. Overall, learning consists of a complex binary process of opening and closing awareness that leads to the integration of perceptions. You need to not only find value in your conscious, known world but also step into your unconscious, unknown world. The best models therefore incorporate not only the pieces of the picture in question but also openness to new information as well as require matching behavior. You then suspend the negative effects of closure and set the stage to make the unconscious more conscious.