The Scientist And The Artist
Though I am afraid there are probably more than this pair, I am most often aware of two distinct halves of my consciousness. The first is The Scientist. The Scientist’s sole domain is the physical world, the world experienced through his five senses. His job is to learn how it works. He is a very logical man and he loves how logical and ordered the physical world is. He loves how everything is caused by something else in a great, interconnected chain of ifs and thens, and that 2+2 always equals 4, and that there are clocks to measure something called time so that you know exactly when dinner is so that you can eat and not die.
And then there is The Artist. The Artist is aware of the physical world, but his primary interest is the non-physical world, which is comprised of thoughts, feelings and, most importantly, freewill. The many, many laws of the physical world do not apply to the non-physical world because the non-physical world is governed by freewill, and freewill is just that – free. It is not caused by anything else. It is what it is, does what it does, with absolute and impenetrable sovereignty.
The Scientist hates the non-physical world. In fact, he doubts that it exists. Because The Scientist only understands the laws of the physical world, the non-physical world – if it exists, which he still doubts that it does – sounds like absolute chaos.
Occasionally The Scientist tries to help the Artist with his work because The Scientist is just that helpful a guy. The Artist has had to learn to talk very gently to The Scientist at such times. He does not talk to The Scientist about The Soul, or Life After Death, or Ghosts, The Artist merely asks The Scientist if he has had the experience of freewill? The Scientist usually admits that he has had that experience. The Scientist, you see, believes in experience because that is how he gathers data, and The Scientist believes in data.
That is all you need to know, says The Artist. You know that you have experienced it and so you know that it exists. Don’t think about it because it won’t make sense to you. Leave it to me. This is my domain, a land apart from time, where the only laws are love and possibility.
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