Sorry Gerald, in this case your critics are correct. if you look VERY CAREFULLY at Wheeler, non Neumann, etc, say, it's not quite what you wrote.

Look at the very quote you just put here now - they have to switch to philosophic discussion. Philosophically, you're correct and it's clear your critics don't understand But you so profoundly weaken your case by saying it's a SCIENTIFIC fact. It's not.

Here I just wrote this and it might help:

People often try to "reconcile" science and contemplation without realizing there's nothing to reconcile. Scientific methods, as currently practiced, hardly touch on the aspects of experience which contemplatives explore.

Neuroscientists have known since at least the 1850s that our brain constructs a representation of an external world which is unknown to our senses.

The "world" we experience with all its suns, moons and stars is like the dashboard of a plane; meaning we live in a kind of flight simulator.

Or you could think of the planets and plants and animals and buildings and people as icons on your computer desk top.

Science measures the movements, shapes, etc of these icons, which gives us marvelous technology as well as great insight as to how these icons have evolved and what they will be like in the future. But it provides no information whatsoever regarding the nature of the hard drive.

Contemplatives, mystics and yogis, on the other hand, focus primarily on the hard drive. If you truly integrated contemplation and science, you would see the icons in an utterly new light.

There are scientists who think this is all gibberish. The problem is, most scientists don't understand the nature of science. Listen, do you understand science at the level of a Nobel Prize winner?

Let's look at one Nobel winner, physicist Steven Weinberg. He won his prize in 1977.yet 20 years later, he was shocked and horrified when a highly respected physicist, a friend of his, said to him, "You know, Steven, science doesn't explain anything, it only describes measurable aspects of our conscious experience."

Weinberg devoted himself to exploring this, but when he published an essay on it in 2003, he acknowledged he couldn't refute his friend.

He did try to change the definition of the word "explain," but this is like saying "it's fake news" when you lose an election.

By saying it's fake news, it doesn't change the fact that you lost. And by saying "we scientists can use the word "explain" any way we want," it doesn't change the fact that science doesnt' "explain" anything in the way the word "explain" has been used by the majority of humanity (and scientists!) since the beginning of language..