Paradigms are not only maps of worlds, they are also the worlds themselves. They guide us through a world while simultaneously illuminating it, making it visible, palpable, accessible, understandable. When inside a paradigm, one lives and breathes a place; its colors and textures; its tastes and smells. A world with sights to see and places to be; a dimension of reality where different things can happen, be seen and known. Each one is a unique place with a language, aesthetics, philosophy, expanses, limitations and boundaries all its own.

Or not. Paradigms can also obscure a place, a dimension of reality by eliminating it from its map; detouring and redirecting travelers in any direction but there. This does not mean that these other worlds do not exist. Our attention is misdirected, distracted to not see it and to be repeatedly focused, transfixed on a predetermined dimension of reality.

A paradigm guides us by pointing out the various aspects of the reality it is illuminating. It says, “look here at this, look there at that; listen to this sound, these words; tastes these tastes, feel these feelings, experience these textures.” Simultaneously, maliciously or beneficently, just as even the most inexperienced of performing magicians, they distract us from “other” sights and sounds. “Look here and there, but pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” This “process,” after an extended period of exposure, eventually “trains” us to see and experience exactly what the paradigm wants us to. At some point, whatever the training has eliminated from your view, literally ceases to exist.

After a lifetime of training, reinforced by an entire culture, we are no longer able to even consider alternative views of reality let alone entirely different, co-existing worlds. People who experience things outside of the current paradigm are considered incorrect at best and completely delusional/crazy at worst. They are systematically discredited, harassed, humiliated and even imprisoned for their views and experiences. When confronted by an entire culture that lives in a different paradigm/world, they are simply labeled backward, uncivilized, ignorant, uneducated.

Imagine if the people living in New York never traveled outside its boundaries. Imagine further that any evidence of other cities was explained away as fantasy, fiction, flights of imagination, photoshopped pictures, doctored videos, manufactured props and souvenirs. At some point this view becomes their reality, explaining everything seen or experienced, a view to which everyone subscribes, creating a consensus reality and disappearing all others. Sounds far fetched? And yet, this is exactly what we are experiencing right here, right now as we live and breathe the mechanical, materialist world of Western Science. It is not that the world of Western Science is false, but rather that it is only one of the many worlds of our cosmos. It is completely out of context.

In the world of Biodynamic Agriculture (https://www.biodynamics.com), originally created by mystic Rudolph Steiner, in addition to the gross material world, there are subtle dimensions filled with beings and forces friendly to human endeavors; beings and forces that can be consciously, intentionally befriended and engaged with in a communal endeavor to nourish and enhance all facets of life. This partnership in co-creation has led to the discovery of awe-inspiring medicinals for plants, people and animals; medicinals and practices that enliven food grown, nourish animals husbanded, and resurrect soil cultivated. Traveling in this world serves to reconnect and reintegrate our mind, body and spirit within and without contributing to the well-being and evolution of both humans and Nature herself. This world is alive and real and endlessly practical and nourishing.

But Western Science, the world in which most of us live, none of this is real. In the paradigm/place of Western Science, any talk of “other” worlds or “inner” worlds is met with scorn, discouraged, ignored, eliminated from any and open discourse and diligently obstructed from all maps. The world of Biodynamics knows and honors the world of Western Science, incorporating and integrating much of its knowledge in its processes, testing, feedback and more (https://www.biodynamics.com/biodynamic-research). Unfortunately, Western Science does not return the favor but rather, as mentioned before, relentlessly demands monopoly status.

I recently read an interesting, well written book, The Gene: An Intimate Biography by Siddhartha Mukherjee. It is the history and ins and outs of the discovery and evolving knowledge of genetics in general and the human genome in particular. But as interesting as it was, it was also alarming.

The book describes every material, concrete known (so far) details of the human genome and all the known (so far) and possible influences it is subject to and the (so far) known effects it has on us. But nowhere in its 500 pages does it ever mention the human mind/consciousness and the potential effect it might have on our genes or anything else for that matter. It does not even consider it as a wild, never thought of before, possibility. To today’s geneticists, the brain exists, but there is really no “mind” – it simply does not exist on any of their maps and so therefore dos not exist at all. But in the cross-cultural, multi-dimensional worlds that I live in, on the other hand, the mind most definitely appears on dozens of maps, developed in dozens of cultures, seen as a discrete dimension of our being with extraordinary influence on all things human.

Because of my experience and education with a wide and wild selection of cross-cultural maps and my focus on integrating them in oder to expand/understand the full breadth of human knowledge, I personally ended up discovering how the mind is constantly interacting with our genes and our genes in turn interacting with our mind and how they are both interacting with our bodies and the environment.

I do not make this claim lightly and I will present a full explanation of this discovery after a few more steps laying down the foundation needed to understand it. And while I cannot “prove it” in the technical sense; I will be able to demonstrate it to the point of being, as Benjamin Franklin once coined in our Constitution, “self-evident.”

It is a long, and often arduous journey, from the world of no-mind with no influence to the land of mind with deep, broad and profound influence. But it is a journey well worth taking. And as we move through the many dimensions of paradigms, we will arrive there with both worlds intact, both worlds coming to know each other, integrating, as they are within us, forming a greater, more dynamic picture of the whole human being – the meeting of mind and matter.

Once you have traveled to other dimensions, other worlds, your own will be forever changed – for the better. Once you return home, other worlds continue to remain open to you, doorways through which you can pass at will always freely offering its gifts. Gifts that can be integrated and synergized to understand, create and experience new dimensions; gifts that can generate new, evolving knowledge simultaneously evolving ourselves.