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Join us on this episode of the podcast, where we speak with Marc Nelson, a scientific researcher, about the growing field of spiritual science. Despite the historical divide between science and spirituality, Nelson shares how pioneering work by researchers such as Dr. Ian Stevenson has led to well-vetted scientific case studies on reincarnation, near-death experiences, and altered states of consciousness. We delve into how recent research has validated the existence of meridians, energy lines that are central to traditional eastern medicine practices such as acupuncture. Nelson also shares insights on body type science research, exploring how the soul may be the source of talent and presence, which cannot be learned but are inherent traits. Join us to learn more about how spiritual science is uniting spirit and soul with science.
Marc Nelson is a scientific researcher.
He discusses his KevinMD article, “The rise of spiritual science: Uniting the soul and science.”
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Transcript
Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast and get CME for this episode by clicking on the CME link in the show notes. Today we welcome back Marc Nelson. He’s a scientific researcher, and his latest KevinMD article is titled “The rise of spiritual science: Uniting the soul and science.” Marc, welcome back to the show.
Marc Nelson: Hi, Doctor. Thank you for having me.
Kevin Pho: So you’ve been on the show multiple times. For those interested in hearing about Marc’s story, just go to KevinMD.com/podcast, go to the search bar in the upper right-hand corner, and search for Marc’s name to look for his previous episodes. But I want to get straight into this most recent article about spiritual science. So give us some context, Marc. Before going to the article, what is spiritual science?
Marc Nelson: Up until recently, most people thought that science and spirit are two things that are separate, like oil and vinegar. They simply don’t mix. We disagree. We look at spirit as something that’s very real in terms of the soul, and we reference Dr. Ian Stevenson from the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies, who really is the pioneer of spiritual science. He began it in the 1960s. He is now no longer with us, but in his time he vetted over 2,000 cases on reincarnation, near-death experiences, and other perceptual phenomena that mainstream science won’t give any credit to, at least not until very, very recently.
So we are looking to expand his research and bring more credence to the idea that spirit and soul are very real. They play a valuable part in human health, along with the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of being human. We are working on strengthening spiritual science to bring forward that research data so that it is offered more credence in the world at large.
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Kevin Pho: So you talk about the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson at the University of Virginia. What are some of the data and studies that he did? Talk more about that background.
Marc Nelson: Indeed. In one of these studies, he went over to Asia, and there was a report of a young child who claimed that she remembered her past life. He essentially went through and vetted that case. He went to the small village that she lived in, spoke with the people who she claimed to have known in her past life, etc., and he gathered all of the evidence and data. Now, obviously, that doesn’t necessarily prove whether her case was real or not, but all of the evidence added up to show that she likely could not have known about so much of what she was talking about.
So he basically went out into the world and found people who had stories about living past lives, and they knew things that they couldn’t possibly have known otherwise. He brought all of that evidence and those facts forward and documented those stories.
That’s really the only thing that we can do right now in terms of bringing forward the evidence and facts, because we don’t have the technology currently to further study what the soul is, what the actual meridians are, what the chakras are, what all these variables are that Eastern medicine has spoken about now for really thousands of years, that here in the West we don’t give much credence to because there is so little science on them. The only reason that there is so little science is, one, we haven’t looked at it, because we haven’t given it the actual credence, and our technology isn’t advanced enough right now to actually go in and look at that.
So what we are waiting for here at Fellow One Research is for our technology to grow to a point where we can begin to look at these variables in a new way, using cutting-edge technology. But Dr. Stevenson, with what he was capable of doing at the time, went out into the world, found people who had real stories about such things, and did his best to vet it all and bring forward the actual evidence and facts. He documented it at the University of Virginia as well as he possibly could with the technology and such that was available to him at the time.
Kevin Pho: So before getting to the article specifically, tell us, how was Dr. Stevenson’s work received at the University of Virginia?
Marc Nelson: Well, I’m not exactly sure, but I would assume that because he was on the cutting edge, he was probably not received so well, especially early on. I think that as he grew in his research data, and more mainstream scientists came on board with what he was talking about, and he had the actual evidence and facts to show, it became more accepted over time. But even then, I think that again, because mainstream science is, I would say, against this idea that spirit is real, it wasn’t very well received. I hope that that has changed, and we are again working on changing that. But I think that he probably met with quite a bit of ridicule and pushback in his time.
Kevin Pho: All right. You write more about that in your KevinMD article, “The rise of spiritual science: Uniting the soul and science.” Now tell us, how did your article come together?
Marc Nelson: Well, again, we here sort of keep this on the down low because we are also ridiculed for the idea of uniting science and spirit. So it was nice that you are open to this idea, so thank you for being open to it, and that’s really what inspired us to pull together all of the research. So that’s what we did. We had gone out and looked, and universities and the National Institutes of Health have done research studies on meridians. So they are giving more credence to the idea that these things that, again, Eastern medicine has talked about for so long are actually very real.
So if we look at things like acupuncture, there are the research studies that are showing that the meridians are actually real, and that acupuncture can actually have a real effect on medical science and medicine in general. Then, in terms of things like the chakras, again, we really don’t have the technology to look at these things right now and verify if they are actually real or not. But with what little science has been done, what we did with this article is we went out, found all the evidence that we could, and summarized it in this article, so that folks at least get a sense that we’re not just a bunch of quacks who are talking about crazy things. We’re actually bringing forward the science as we know it now, which is very young.
And again, because of our lack of technology and just the lack of research that has been done on this, there isn’t enough science right now, and that’s what we are looking at doing here, strengthening that, so that folks will give it more of a thought. They will look at this article, and they will see all the evidence that we brought forward in it, yada yada.
And I will also say that one of the most interesting things in that article, which we think is neat, is the 5,000-year-old man who was found up in the glacier. He was mummified, basically, but they found acupuncture tattoos on him, and what the evidence and research were showing is that they knew about acupuncture and the meridians 5,000 years ago. So this isn’t something, again, that is just coming out of the blue now. We as human beings have known about this for a very long time. It’s just only been given credence in the East, and we are hoping that we can change that here in the West.
Kevin Pho: So you mentioned meridians and some studies that the National Institutes of Health has done on meridians. For those who aren’t familiar, what is a meridian? And tell us about some of the data and studies that the National Institutes of Health has been doing.
Marc Nelson: The actual meridians are essentially like lines in the body that energy flows through. If those lines are open and flowing well, then it speaks to health, and if they are clogged or jammed, it speaks to unhealth and imbalance in the body. That’s why acupuncture is actually shown to be a helpful and valid means of medicine.
What the research at the National Institutes of Health is showing is, one, that the meridians are real. They actually do exist in the human body. By doing the actual research and looking at whether, if we put an acupuncture needle in here or there, it actually has an effect on the human body, what it’s showing is that it actually does have an effect. We don’t really understand right now how well or what that effect is, but just the fact that it has an effect on the human body shows that there’s something real there that is worthy of being studied further. When an actual acupuncture needle was placed in a place that was supposed to be, quote unquote, “clogged or jammed,” it would open it up.
And again, at this point we don’t really understand the meridians in general well enough to know what that really means or what it actually affects. There’s still so much more science that we need to bring forward and do. But just the fact that the NIH is allowing research dollars to be spent on this, and that the research that we’ve done so far actually shows that there is an effect in terms of the acupuncture needle relative to where we think the actual meridian is, shows that there’s something real there that deserves further research and study.
Aside from that, I can’t really speak further on it, because again, the science is so young and we just don’t know. But I think that that is a very valid thing, that we have research that shows that when we put a needle in here and it has an effect of unclogging something, or it has some effect in general, that shows that there is a realness there that should be studied further.
Kevin Pho: Now, for those clinicians who may be listening to this and are a little bit skeptical, why is it important that they should know that spiritual science potentially is real?
Marc Nelson: Well, for a scientist who believes in the soul, a human lifetime is way too complex and complicated to learn what we should be learning as human beings in just one lifetime. We look at the human body as a vehicle that the soul lives in while it’s here in this lifetime, and it’s something that grows through time. The soul is something that grows through time.
So if that’s true, if the soul is something that is real and separate from the physical human body, and it actually learns and grows through lifetimes, then that can explain why there are people out there, as Dr. Stevenson found, real human beings who speak of past lives or other lives where they were here or there and they had learned this or that. Now they’re in this life, and they have experiences in this life that are affected by that life. There’s a cause and effect relative to one life and another life, and all of that affects the soul in general and human health.
So one example that has been looked at is that you have some people who have odd scars, and some of them claim that in their past life they were shot, or that in some way that scar is directly relative to a wound that was actually received in the previous life, which can cause trauma, etc. So if the soul is real, if it does move from lifetime to lifetime and it’s learning, then it has an effect on that lifetime and into other lifetimes, and that can affect our health, yada yada.
There’s so much here that it would be nice if we had the technology and the science to actually say, is this real or not, or is it just in people’s heads, yada yada. But we think that it’s valid. We think that so much more research should be done on it, and that’s our goal here, to actually find ways to do the actual research to bring all this forward.
Kevin Pho: So talk to us about some of this research going forward. What are some of the directions this research is taking? What are some of the other major medical institutions, like the NIH and universities, that are devoting resources to this area?
Marc Nelson: Our body type science goes hand in hand with understanding not just the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of being human, but we are looking at the soul and the meridians and the chakras relative to body type science. So if these chakras and the meridians are real, and they exist in the body, and they play a part in terms of the human energy system, which includes the nervous system, then it would make sense, it would correlate, that if there’s a part of the human body that is lacking genetically developed muscle and muscle mass, and that’s directly relative to the chakras and the meridians, then all that would have a cause and effect.
So say, for someone like me, who has lacked muscle and muscle mass in my stomach area, if there is a chakra in that area, which Eastern medicine claims that there is, that would have an effect on the chakra relative to the actual muscle and muscle mass, and the skinny fat, and all the other variables that go into being human. So all that would correlate if all these things are real.
Our goal is to begin to ask the actual questions, you know, about the actual gut, about the actual gut feeling, and not just the gut but everywhere else in the body where there are claimed to be chakras and meridians, etc. We would like to begin asking the actual questions that would help better understand those actual variables and correlations.
In terms of other institutes, you have the Max Planck over in Germany, which gives credence to all this, and they are actually looking at all this. But unfortunately, aside from the universities and the NIH and the Max Planck, right now that’s really where this is limited to, because again, so much of mainstream science and medical doctors just don’t give credence to any of this. That’s our ultimate goal, to open this up and get more credence to it, and the only way that we can do that is by bringing forward that science. We are working on the grant funding so that we can begin to ask these actual questions. Right now, we don’t know of any new technology that would help out, but our eyes and ears are open in terms of any new technologies that can help with this, and that’s really where we are going with it.
Kevin Pho: Assuming that we do get the data and the science progresses forward, how do you envision spiritual science being incorporated into contemporary exam rooms today?
Marc Nelson: Oh, that’s a really good question. I’m not even sure if I’ve thought that far ahead, because there’s such an aversion to all this. But I think it would be wonderful if, when you go in and see your doctor and they ask you all of the typical questions about your physical and even mental and emotional health, they begin asking about spiritual health, even if that starts with, “Do you believe in the soul, and if you do, what does that mean?”
I certainly do hope that once we have more data, and once it’s taken more seriously by mainstream science and medical doctors, we find a way to properly incorporate it into the day-to-day health care of the average person. That would be one of the things that we will most certainly focus on once we get there.
Kevin Pho: And my final question, Marc. Tell us some of your take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience.
Marc Nelson: Well, one, thank you for having me on. As a spiritual scientist, I know the rigors of the ridicule that come with being such, and for those of you out there who have experienced the same thing, we encourage you to come forward and go to the FellowOne.com website. We have multiple articles on spiritual science, and you can comment at the bottom of them. You can go to the article on KevinMD.com and comment on that article. Please come forward and tell us your stories. The more people that can come forward in a scientific way and tell us your story, and help document more stories like Dr. Ian Stevenson did, the more that we grow this and the more credence that we can offer to it. That’s really how all this works.
Kevin Pho: Marc, thank you so much for coming back on the show and sharing your time and insight.
Marc Nelson: Thank you for having me, Doctor.
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