Fifth World Medicine (Book II): The Science of Healing People and Their Planet

By Dr. John Hughes

In a vast world of mainstream and alternative health approaches, how do we practice the best medicine for Earth and her inhabitants? Does the scientific method, developed in the 17th century, provide relevant and effective knowledge for us in the 21st century? Do so-called objective, scientific experiments really lead to us to the full truth abo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookside Press
• Release date: May 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781778830730

Dr. John Hughes

Dr. John Hughes practices traditional osteopathic and integrative medicine in Colorado. Dr. Hughes graduated from the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine and post-graduate training in family practice at the University of Arizona. His current clinic, Aspen Integrative Medicine, provides the latest innovations in modern and natural medicine, including regenerative injection therapy for sports injuries as well as a patented protocol for traumatic brain injury through TBI Therapy. Dr. Hughes descends from the Wolf Clan of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation. Dr. Hughes honors the wolf and his Cherokee ancestors through his intuitive medical practice and way of life. Dr. Hughes currently lives near Aspen, Colorado with his wife, dog, and 3 cats. He regularly enjoys trail running and skiing in the wilderness near his home.

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Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Beyond Naturalism:

The Metaphysical Nature of Science and Reason

Chapter 2: What is Contemplative Science and Medicine?

Chapter 3: Contemplative Science in Action: Embracing Intuition,

Context, and Synchronicity

Chapter 4: Nature is Sacred: Nature is Medicine

Chapter 5: Nature as Medicine: You are Nature

Chapter 6: Nature is Medicine: Health is Connection

Chapter 7: A Return to Mythology-Hopi Mythology

Message from the Wolf

Appendix

Preface

In Book I of Fifth World Medicine , readers are challenged to traverse a path of chaos—a path leading to the birth of a new world, a Fifth World—a world composed of integrated spirit and physical elements. As you may remember, a necessary requirement to follow this path involves letting go of our worldviews, attachments, and all that we think to be solid or true. And once free from attachments, fellow travelers can then faithfully embrace Mother Earth and her sacred Nature found in dark caves, deep canyons, and the very soil that makes up our beings.

On the path to the Fifth World, as we abandon our cravings or attachments in exchange for a deep connection to a wild, dark Earth, what is really being asked? To traverse the narrow path to the Fifth World, we engage with the dynamic interplay of yin and yang, or respectively, chaos and order. What is meant by chaos and order?

Chaos is the yin (feminine) of life, traditionally known as darkness. Chaos is the realm of possibility, the source of ideas, the mystery of gestation and birth.² It is also the accident by the road. Ultimately, chaos is unexplained and unexplored territory.³ In 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson writes:

Chaos is what extends, eternally, and without limit, beyond the boundaries of all states, all ideas, and all disciplines. It is the underworld of myth, where the dragon and the gold it guards certainly coexist. Chaos is where we are when don’t know where we are, and what we are doing when we don’t know what we are doing.⁴

In contrast, order is explored territory⁵ made known to us primarily through yang (masculine) activities.

It is the structure of society. It is the tribe, religion, hearth, home, and country… It is the place where the behavior of the world matches our expectations and desires. But order is sometimes tyranny and stultification as well, when the demand for certainty and uniformity and purity becomes one-sided."⁶

Okay, given these attributes of chaos and order, do we really want to be friends with chaos? Do we want to be intimate with the yin energy of Mother Nature? Are you ready to be transformed through the powerful rebirth with Mother Earth? Are you willing to risk a little chaos and disorder in exchange for new birth?

If we are honest, many of us might not choose voluntarily to leave the ordered reality of the Fourth World and transverse the path to the Fifth. We crave predictability and safety and want to know where we are going on a well-lit paved path instead of traversing a dark, slippery hiking trail during the middle of the night. Some of us crave this Fourth World order so much that we don’t even care if it is tyrannical or dictated by a big Brother. And as a result, rather than foster the true freedom of a wild uncontrolled world, Fourth World peoples settle day after day for the illusion of connection, freedom, and truth in their lives.

But the challenge with this line of thinking is that chaos exists whether we like it or not. And, as the ever-present global wobble known as precession, or precession of the equinoxes, hearkens the advent of the Fifth World (aka fifth precessional cycle of our planet Earth), the old, Fourth World order has begun to crack apart at the seams. As a physician, I see the disintegration of this Fourth World order particularly in the realm of how we understand what is true through science and find good medicine. Largely, in the Fourth World, how peoples understand and connect with each other and with all of Nature derives from antiquated 17th century disembodied rational thinking and scientific ideas. Ultimately, this dualistic rationality and antiquated Western science fails to intimately connect us with Nature and thus provide authentic truth about the coming Fifth World. Even as it is practiced today, Western science does not illuminate the path to the new life in the next world. Instead, with its reductionistic lens, Western science and its practitioners just observe, with objective disregard, as the Fourth World disintegrates into a kind of chaos characterized by viral outbreaks, new wars, climate changes, corporate exploitation, toxic pollution, privacy invasion, and massive confusion.

In his book Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick states, Where chaos begins, classical science stops. Western, classical, 17th century-based science—even with all its so-called evidence-based research claims—ultimately is inadequate to guide us on the path as chaos unfolds in the Fourth World.⁷

It thus is high time for a new science and a new medicine, albeit with ancient roots, that connects us in a deeper relationship with our bodies, with each other, with Nature, and the Creator such that we can rally in times of chaos and disarray. In the Hopi prophesies, this Fourth World chaos qualifies also as a time of purification and a chance for rebirth for those on the path to the Fifth World. It is time for us to understand truth and love through the lens of new order, a new kind of science and medicine that unites us intimately with our Mother Earth and all of Nature in a shared common destiny of the Fifth World. But note, getting friendly with chaos does not mean we forsake order; it just means we are looking for a new kind of order. Recall that there’s always a little bit of new order arising out of the chaos and a little bit of chaos in the old order.

In kayaker terms, to find the Fifth World, you must get friendly with class V whitewater to find a clean and perfect line of green water that will take you safely down the river in one piece. Look for order amidst the chaos. It is found in deep wonderment and intimacy with Nature and that same nature that makes up your core of your body and spirit.

Peterson says it well with rule 1 of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos:

Stand up straight with your shoulders back means casting dead, rigid, and too tyrannical order back into the chaos in which was generated: it means withstanding the ensuing uncertainty, and establishing, in congruence, a better more meaningful and [sustainable] order…Walk tall and forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous.⁸

So, dare to be part of this turbulent chaos that washes the soul and cleanses the body. Dare to be, as an inhabitant of our mother planet, transformed and reborn. At the end of this gestational tunnel of darkness, a new life in sync with a new world, a Fifth World, awaits you. 

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2. Peterson, Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. Penguin UK, 2018, p. 41.

3 . Peterson, p. 35.

4 . Peterson, pp. 35-36.

5 . Peterson, p. 36.

6 . Peterson, p. 36.

7 . Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. Penguin, 1987, p. 3.

8. Peterson, pp. 27-28.

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Beyond Naturalism: The Metaphysical Nature of Science and Reason

A scientist who writes poetry! exclaimed the college girl I was attempting to swoon by thoughtful words.

Yeah, I guess I’m a little outside the box in comparison to most modern scientists but maybe for good reason or at least, good passion. My undergraduate years entailed traversing the mountains of the Carolinas by foot, kayak, and bicycle, interspersed with a few necessary tests about chemistry and biology I really do not understand very well anymore.

With beautiful collegiate girls, amazing fall and springtime colors, pleasant weather, mountain waterfalls, I possessed a heart ready to experience the world—who wouldn’t be poet in such a landscape? Sure, I was a scientist—even one who traveled the country proving (to someone out there) that I could create some novel heavy metal chelation compounds or destroy toxic industrial chemicals using spent rocket fuel—but I was also human full of passionate ambitions, youthful energy, and a mind to somehow explore and describe the adventures of life.

Dude, CALM DOWN! This is a scientific paper; not some journal sharing time about your life experiences and how you contemplated some salamander who caught you peering at him under a rock in a cold stream on a warm sunny day with the most beautiful girl in the world by your side. If you insist on discussing salamanders, talk about the ‘science’ behind them: how they mate, how the stripes on the males converge, how they grow body parts back, what the hellbender salamander looks like, and why they require constant moisture.

Sure, I like all that physical data and the naturalist activities that go along with obtaining such information, but do not salamanders and maybe even humans have more important qualities than those determined by modern science? If ‘science’ really involves a holistic pursuit to discover and know all that makes up life, why should I quell my passions or contemplative thoughts about the salamander under the rock or the mountain mist that sprays our shivering legs as we stand at the base of a majestic waterfall? Perhaps modern science, with all its claim to intellectual predominance, just has little desire for my poetry, my passions, my musings, or even ‘me’ or ‘you’ beyond an identity as objects to be studied in a limited fashion.

So, comes the emotionless reply from those who question the idea that modern science understands the world in a limited fashion. Who really needs poetry anyhow? How does some passionate contemplation about life promote the progress of society that a benevolent use of modern science does?⁹

One of the biggest roadblocks on the path to what the Hopi peoples call the Fifth World is the widespread overemphasis on objective science and disembodied reason for understanding and functioning in the world. This reductionistic overreliance on draconian scientific methodologies, known as naturalism, fosters a dualistic divide of spiritual and physical, body and mind, human and human, Earth and human, Creator, and all of Nature. Unraveling why Westerners so unquestioningly depend on objective science and disembodied rationalism is the key for unraveling the destructive effects of dualism in on the health of humans and of the Earth. Ultimately, to traverse the narrow road to the Fifth World, humans must learn to overcome dualism and find harmony within themselves, each other, and all Nature.

Okay, you may ask me, John, what’s the purpose of engaging in this philosophical discussion of Western science and medicine? Is this not just one more of your heady, Ivy League topics with little relevance to waking, normal existence? How does it apply to the everyday, for peoples just trying to survive?

For Westerners, Nature is primarily seen through the dualistic lens of objective science. Western scientific practitioners think of empirical facts as the ultimate truth and base most of the medicine they prescribe or inject, careers they choose, and tools they use on these disembodied scientific facts. Trusting in scientific facts, Western humans often unknowingly sever their connection to the Creator, other humans, the Earth, and all of Nature. If something can’t be proven by science, it does not have much value. Westerners also claim that these so-called facts provide a basis for evidence-based medicine and devote billions of dollars annually to produce randomized clinical studies in Ivy League universities (Harvard, Yale, Duke, Stanford, etc.). Indeed, if you want to have a respectable career in science or medicine, you must base your decisions on these lofty scientific studies—which, in the Fourth World, have the same kind of authoritative hold (hegemony) over truth that the king and Catholic church did in the pre-Enlightenment eras of the Renaissance and Middle Ages. Anyone who dares to make imaginative or subjective assertions about Nature which differ from the facts produced by high university science receives a label, in the modern Fourth World, as a quack, a charlatan, a witch, a crazy poet, or a dreamer.

Okay, but what if the realm of faith, poetry, and spirituality is intimately intertwined with our world of physicality? What happens to the authority of scientific facts over reality when the veil between the physical and spiritual world thins out? How do we operate in such a world where once-thought-of-as-truthful scientific facts lose their ultimate authority and power?

When we realize the whole truth about reality stemming from a loving, subjective interconnectivity of all life and a unity of the spiritual and physical—including the Creator (Great Spirit) and Nature (Physicality)—then we can begin to embrace an epistemology that’s more truthful than what is proffered by objective science and its medicine.¹⁰ Baconian science, as the primary epistemology for Western peoples for understanding Nature since the 17th century, is largely responsible for creation of the Fourth World as well as its continued maintenance. Naturalism, as a quasi-religious belief in science for absolute knowledge about all reality, has prevented many Western peoples from a harmonious relationship with the Creator and Nature in the Fourth World.

While Western science and technology have, admittedly, led to the creation of useful tools and information, to operate in the Fifth World requires a new paradigm beyond this 17th-century science for understanding medicine and Nature. In the Fifth World, good medicine derives from an embodied methodology of understanding the world through an ultimate science which brings humans into an intimate, heartfelt, and healthier relationship with their bodies, each other, animals, plants, the Earth, and the heavens.

To better understand how to do medicine in a more powerful way than what is dictated by Fourth World science, it is necessary to understand a bit more philosophy, including metaphysics and what Aristotle defined as natural philosophy. Our very sense of reality (including our understanding of science, medicine, and whomever we are) stems largely from culture-wide philosophical and metaphysical patterns. These metaphysical patterns inform our sense of reality at the very core, even beyond what our minds normally consciously acknowledge. Philosophy, particularly metaphysics, allows us to look behind the curtain of our unconscious assumptions about life, including those regarding science and medicine, to the nature of ourselves. Hence, an exploration into the identity of science, medicine, and us necessarily includes some understanding of metaphysics.

What is metaphysics? Metaphysics, in its purest sense, involves understanding the nature of reality at its basic level. In philosophy, metaphysics includes first principles, such as ontology and cosmology, and is more intimately connected with epistemology. Let’s simplify all those philosophical terms. Ontology is the nature of being. Epistemology is how we know what we know. Cosmology is philosophy that deals with the origin and general structure of the universe. Teleology is the study of ultimate ends.

We all hold specific ontological (understandings of being) and epistemological (how one knows) perspectives. These perspectives frame how we perform (actualize) and conceive (potentiate) science, medicine, and ourselves. In short, how we, as spiritual-physical beings, show up in the world is largely determined by who we are at the core (ontology), how we see life at the core (epistemology), and the way we engage with all of Mother Nature and all the universe (cosmology). Consciously seeking to understand our identity and ideologies constitutes a dialogue about metaphysics.

In the fourth century BC, Aristotle, known as the father of science in the West,¹¹ articulated an epistemology originally called natural philosophy, which was the known as science before Bacon and Descartes.¹² As part of natural philosophy, Aristotle describes two main areas of scientific inquiry: ultimate science or ancillary science. For Aristotle, ultimate science is the most exact science because it deals with first principles (nature of being, understanding, and engaging the cosmos—aka metaphysics) and ultimate ends (telos). Ultimate science reveals intimate knowledge of, as well as spiritual and physical awareness, its subjects. Ultimate science supersedes what Aristotle called "ancillary science, the type of science that deals with the utilitarian and productive aspects of the universe.¹³ Aristotle considers ancillary science less authoritative than ultimate science.¹⁴ For Aristotle, the practice of ultimate science" begins with wonderment (of the stars, moon, origin of life, cosmology) and inspires one from the heart to acquire knowledge.

Ultimate science and its methodology stretch as far the imagination can go because all arenas of cosmic order of being (the aspects of life, death, life beyond death, all the universe, heaven, earth, etc.) are open to exploration. And the end goal of such scientific exploration is the general good of the whole of Nature.¹⁵ Ultimate science thus facilitates knowledge of the highest orders of being. Aristotle describes ultimate science as the most honorable science for it is divine science, or Wisdom.¹⁶ Divine, ultimate science deals not only with Nature but with divine beings and the first principles of the Creator. In short, the metaphysical essence of this supreme, ultimate science exists