I was thrilled to ask this alchemical question of Martha Beck on a MommyMuse interview:  How can somebody who has been extremely skeptical about religion and superstition, who believes there is a scientific explanation for everything, speak openly about her mystical experiences?  Here is what Martha had to say:

“A lot of peoples’ experience with religion is actually about people being dominant.  For example, Galileo could make observations through his telescope and say, ‘Guess what guys; the Sun does not revolve around the Earth; it’s the Earth revolving around the Sun.’

The Catholic Church, at the time, thought that was heresy because it meant that man was not the center of creation.  That didn’t go well with their personal philosophy and the way they interpreted their religion.  They arrested him and said, ‘No, it’s not true and you can’t make us say it is.’

It wasn’t until 1984, I believe, that the Catholic Church said, ‘Okay, Galileo was right.’  The Enlightenment, which was pushing back against that religious oppression, was all about the scientific method.  You don’t believe anything until you can prove it.  You approach everything with skepticism.

I very much followed that same path in my own life.  By the time I was a young adult at Harvard, where I spent ten years as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student, it was all about not believing anything that couldn’t be verified, tested, and validated.

However, I started to have experiences that I could validate.  I could repeat, and I could test, yet, there is really no explanation for them in our current understanding of science.  Although, at the edges of science – for Catholics, you look at quantum mechanics, which is the leading edge of physics right now; it’s very, very mystical.  Stuff is going on there that any other earlier scientist would have said was magical thinking.  In fact, when Einstein was dying, he said the biggest mistake of his life was that he didn’t acknowledge that because it just seemed too crazy.  That is what experimentation is continuing to show us.

The fact is that if two particles are ever connected, they become entangled with one another’s energy, and thereafter, will always affect each other, no matter how far the distance is separating them.  That means that if you had a baby, that baby’s physical self was intimately connected with yours.  That baby will always be connected to you through quantum entanglement, even when you are far, far apart.  (Author’s note: This gives scientific backing to mother’s intuition!)

The science is much more complicated than that, but basically, they’ve been able to test things in the laboratory such as the fact that people know who is calling them on the phone – not with 100% accuracy, but with an odds against chance rate of like trillions to one; they can guess who is on the phone before they pick it up.  There have been many really good, very solid science that is done on things that we once would have called paranormal or even superstition.

It’s real, it’s just that scientists are having trouble explaining it and we have that push back that comes from being dominated by people who arbitrarily said, ‘My religious belief trumps your observation.’  The science is actually coming right along.”

So there you go, it is entirely possible to believe there is a scientific explanation and absolutely know that mystical phenomena happen, period.  For more information on Martha Beck and her wonderful offerings, read The Power of Personal Metamorphosis, listen to Find Your Right Life No Matter What, and visit MarthaBeck.com.