a Zen meditation cushion and also taught for three years at an
　　　　  institute run by Catholic mystic Father Matthew Fox. Rubik, a
　　　　  well-regarded hard scientist, recently attended a White House
　　　　  meeting on health care in her capacity as advisor to the NIH Office
　　　　  of Alternative Medicine, where she heads a panel on "electromagnetic
　　　　  interventions." The panel will examine everything from electrical
　　　　  therapies used to accelerate bone healing to a "neurobiochemical
　　　　  stimulator" (which, she says, "has created profound changes in
　　　　  animals' brain chemistry and moods"). Her passion, she says, is "how
　　　　  energy fields--maybe including a nonlocal field of consciousness
　　　　  itself--interact with life."
　　　　  Like a number of her Causality Project colleagues, Rubik feels her
　　　　  various spiritual sojourns have given her an inside track on the
　　　　  mind-brain puzzle. Her accounting makes it sound as if Descartes,
　　　　  last seen at his recent, merciful public interment, may yet shake
　　　　  off the clods of soil to meander among the scientific living. "I
　　　　  agree Cartesianism is dreadful," she muses, "but there is something
　　　　  immaterial about who we are. Maybe we'll need to go back to Eastern
　　　　  mystical concepts like an 'etheric' or 'astral' energy domain."
　　　　  Clearly, these ideas--particularly as they emerge from the belly of
　　　　  what looks suspiciously like a new-age Trojan Horse wheeled in
　　　　  sometime around the dawn of Aquarius--will irritate some
　　　　  sensibilities. "Media Blitz for Mind/Body Malarkey" blared a recent
　　　　  headline in a scientific-muckraking newsletter called Probe. The
　　　　  article took aim at what it held to be the moonier aspects of
　　　　  Moyers' TV series, which it called "seductively anti-medical,
　　　　  anti-scientific, and anti-rational." Its claim that "a campaign has
　　　　  been launched to radically change and spiritualize America's
　　　　  science-based medicine" received wide press coverage.
　　　　  "It's not as if anyone's saying science is completely wrong,"
　　　　  counters Beverly Rubik. "Conventional science is appropriate within
　　　　  a conventional framework. But there can be other sciences which
　　　　  exist outside of that box. We need multiple ways of inquiry that
　　　　  accord with--and I realize this will sound odd--our levels of being.
　　　　  Our usual practice of science is based on the lowest common
　　　　  denominator of human consciousness: of feeling separated from the
　　　　  rest of universe.
　　　　  "What's missing," she says, "is attention to the inner state of the
　　　　  investigator. We've been pretending we're neutral, playing dead,