More than science & mumbo jumbo

It's easy to see why some of the reviews of The Power of Now dismiss it as 'mumbo jumbo'.

A few years back I read a book with the same name that influenced me a fair bit. It was basically an argument in favour of sound reasoning, a rebuke to charlatans and snake oil salesmen and those who sign up to their theories. I remember that Carol Caplan - and her influence on the Blairs - and homeopathy came up quite a lot.

The bottom line was that we should put all our faith in reasoning and science.

At university some of my anthropology lecturers used to talk about science as just another way of looking at the world. I thought they were mad.

Science is about what's true and what's not. The evidence is all around us. It's created TV and cars. it's put a man on the moon. Gravity is a universal constant, right?!

I now see that I was missing the point. It was never about science being wrong. It was about what science ruled in and out as valid forms of knowledge.

The world seen through a scientific lens tends towards a rationalist and materialist viewpoint. It values certainty what can be proved. It is outward looking. It creates a division between us and the world.

What it has tended to ignore is our own subjective experience of the world. After all, our basic experience of life can't be examined by others or subjected to experiments. It can't be proved or objectified.

Yet it is the most basic element of our experience.

We live with it everyday. It is the lens through which we see and understand the world. It frames our understanding of everything. And we have been paying it barely any attention.

I have a confession to make. I never actually finished Eckhart's book. I never will.

His call to try to re-engage with ourselves, with our basic experience of consciousness is refreshing. It talks about a kind of knowledge that is often neglected. It's message - to try to re-engage with our own bodies, feel more and think less - is more relevant than ever in today's hectic, always-on world.

The problem with the book is that this is not something that you can read about. It's not something you can easily rationalise.

It's something you have to put into practice.