Panel: RELIGION, HEALTH, AND WELLBEING



165.8 - YOU ARE NOTHING (BUT THE PLACEBO) IN SELF-TRANSCENDENCE AND SPIRITUAL HEALING: CATCHING A FRAGMENT OF GOD'S THOUGHTS WITH PEIRCE'S SCIENTIFIC MYSTICISM

AUTHORS:
Lettner A.T. (independent researcher (doctorate completed at the University of Kassel) ~ Kassel ~ Germany)
Text:
The title of this paper echoes the (2014) book publication You are the placebo by Joe Dispenza and his method of self-directed healing (or neuroplasticity: SDN). It also plays upon the notion of nothingness or "emptiness" common to mystical traditions where transcending one's more narrowly egoic "self" is typically understood as a prerequisite for spiritual growth and transformation. Besides its reliance upon a broad spectrum of cutting-edge scientific theories, the work by Dispenza clearly bears traces of Eastern philosophical insights as well as Yogic and Buddhist principles. Considering that the promises and challenges of "religious" or "spiritual" healing directly touch upon the relationship between religion and science, this also raises the question of how various spiritual frames of reference (including human co-creation and Buddhist philosophical insights) might fit into the picture. In methodological terms, I am going to make a plea for Søren Brier's Peirce-based approach of cybersemiotics, which integrates consciousness and a first-person perspective at the very basis of its meta-theoretical framework for knowledge. According to Peirce's "scientific mysticism", doing science presents itself as "a paradigmatic form of religious activity" (Raposa). Trusting that all roads lead to Rome (or Varanasi!), analytical efforts will be balanced by a more basic intuition that human beings may equally profit from various religious, secular and/or hybrid spiritual paradigms and perspectives. And "though we cannot think any thought of God's, we can catch a fragment of His Thought, as it were" (Peirce CP 6.502) - taking theosemiotic steps towards (spiritual) healing with the discoveries of science!