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Filters and Reflections: Perspectives on Reality

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I have read "Filters and Reflections, Perspectives on Reality" with great interest. I would like to review, in particular, the contribution of Nelson Abreu. Abreu's article presents a well reasoned and clearly exposed introduction to the so-called consciential paradigm, considering human consciousness as the result of a complex compound system, made of (at least) three different intelligent bodies (soma, psychosoma and mentalsoma), each of them manifesting in different existential dimension, according to the specific sensory channels and filters they are equipped with. Abreu makes a powerful case for the objective reality of these others bodies, or vehicles of manifestation, the hypothesis of which appears mandatory if we take seriously the full spectrum of our lucid experiences, like for instance the paradigmatic out-of-body experience. This doesn't mean, however, that we are gratuitously giving up scientific rigor, multiplying entities beyond necessity, on the contrary! The situation reminds me of physicist Wolfgang Pauli, when he had to hypothesize the existence of the subtle and elusive neutrino, as the only logical explanation of beta decay not giving up the essential ingredient of energy conservation. In the same way, as it emerges from the reading of Abreu's essay, we are today compelled to courageously enunciate the hypothesis of additional more subtle and elusive somas, as the only rational explanation for the plethora of our multidimensional sense-data, basis of our cognition, if we are not willing to give up the most essential of our scientific ingredients: explanatory power."

Massimiliano Sassoli de Bianchi, PhD.
Switzerland

Also note the review by the editor of Time & Mind is found in the Scientific & Medical Network website: [....].