Editor’s Introduction

Axel Abraham Randrup (real name) is trained in biochemistry and psychopharmacology, with a Dr. phil. degree from Copenhagen University. He is a Laboratory leader at St. Hans Mental Hospital, Denmark, and some of his research publications have been widely cited. He has had a number of transcendent experiences. The one he has chosen to submit to TASTE occurred in his garden in Denmark when he was 68 years old.

Nature Spirituality
Axel Abraham Randrup

In a recent paper, “An Alternative to Materialism: Converging Evidence from Nature Spirituality and Natural Science” Cybernetics & Human Knowing, Vol.4, No.4, pp. 15-24, 1997, I have described some transcendental experiences of my own. Here is an excerpt from that paper:

“Experiences of this kind are also familiar to the present author. Here is an excerpt from a private letter written (in French)

July 7, 1994: “This morning, when I went into my garden (about 10 minutes ago), I had what I now call a spiritual experience. I experienced the garden (the trees, the grass etc.) clearly more intensely than at other occasions, when I also loved the garden. This time I experienced “the eternal now” as well, and immediately after I thought that the felt importance and intensity of my experience was more essential than its duration and its position in the ordinary time.”

I also remember having experienced entropy, a more abstract, theoretical entity of nature, in this spiritual way.”

Contributor’s Comments on the Experience

This and similar experiences have affected my everyday scientific work, i.e. I find it difficult to accept materialism, the idea of a world “out there” separated from human consciousness. This is described in the article mentioned above.

These experiences have also been (and are) inspiration for continuing scientific research.