A question from a curious white belt:

I have learned about the method of empirical science in high school. In a nutshell: you witness a phenomenon, formulate a hypothesis to try and explain it, and then test that hypothesis through experimenting. If the hypothesis is confirmed, great. More knowledge. If not, reject the hypothesis and think of something else.

But how is knowledge in the meta-intuitive arts obtained? The same way, the only difference being that a meta-artist uses intuition to gather data? If this is it, I would love some elaboration. If it is not, then what is it? How does one acquire new knowledge on this subject?

Closely related to the previous is the discovery of new meta-techniques. Once a person has reached a certain level of ability, creative thinking and experimenting seem to me to be the key to discovering new meta-techniques and exercises. I suppose scanning is involved in this process too, but that is probably a specification of intuition, depending on the exact definitions used here at Elfpath. Any comments/thoughts on this?

Thanks in advance,

Martin

The scientific method, when applied right, can be a really powerful tool. As some of you know, I'm a scientist by profession. That is, I'm paid to experiment and figure things out and test hypothesis. Much of the meta-science is no different at all. The biggest difference is that regular science hasn't caught up yet to where it can physically test a lot of meta-physical phenomena - we can't hook people up to machines to test if their chakras work better or if the energy in a room changed after someone shaped it.

I sometimes like to compare the meta to the very early years of modern science, where rich boys and exporers would take a ship and sail across the world, studying whatever interesting things they saw and taking notes. They would collect bones of different kinds, and try to deduce something about the animal that it had been. They would take home beetles from all over the planet, and compare them and see how many species there were. They would collect lots of feathers from a species of bird, and measure it and see how they were different or how they were the same, hoping to understand more about how these birds flew and if it was the same for males and females. This is how Darwin first started thinking about evolution. He went to a group of tropical islands called the Galapagos, and looked at the birds, who all were very similar but had different sized beaks depending on the type of nuts they ate.

The meta- is at this stage in its scientific development. Like Darwin didn't have fancy electroforesis methods to decipher the DNA of all those birds and make a phylogenetic tree to see which bird evolved from which, when... we don't have the tools to measure a lot of the meta. As far as we can tell, the world has been in a very dark place for a very long time, with little energy moving and little potential for meta-. We're just starting things up, so neither the tools nor the understanding are there. We are starting out much like those early life history scientist (starting as early as Pliny in the 1st century AD), curiously picking things up when we find them, comparing them to other things, collecting data, coming up with ideas to explain what we see and then testing them with what methods we have available.


The method for much of the Elfpath process has gone like this. We (usually meaning Angel) would run into a phenomenon that couldn't be explained by what was known at the time, so we'd go looking for ways to explain it. That usually involves scanning a whole lot of people (hundreds and thousands of them) to see if they also had this phenomenon, and if it was the same for males and females... much like the birds, or the beetles. Based on that, we'd make a theory. "Well, it looks like this is going on. That means that logically, this and that should follow." And we check if this and that DOES follow. We see, by scanning or even by just looking for physical evidence (women in which we sense A have B physical characteristic, etc) if our hypothesis checks out, and improve where possible on our current understanding.

More specifically, Angel often comes up with a process that should fix things, tests it on himself, then explains it to me and/or Cas without telling us what it's supposed to do or what we are supposed to sense, to see if we come up with the same results. If the new thing makes it this far and we get positive results, I find a way to translate it into a class for our more advanced students, and we see how it works out for them. If they also find the same, and it seems to make things easier and happier for them, we make it part of the curriculum and teach it to other people. Not all new things make it to that point, and often the experiences of our (older) students help us understand it better and finetune our understanding of it.


A lot of meta-science, as you call it, depends on the ability to scan - but it doesnt rely on the ability of ONE person. This is why it is so important and wonderful that we are creating a group where everyone is learning how to scan. If 100 people can look at an energy system and see the same thing, independently, it's fair to assume something is there. You're absolutely right that creative thinking and experimenting are hugely important in this - just like in science, really, if it is done right (which too often it's not).


And thanks for asking questions! Anyone should feel free to ask, especially if they come up with really good questions. It's one thing to say "Uh, I don't get it." It's another to actually make the effort to think about what you don't get and formulate an intelligent question like you did.