INTRODUCTION TO INTEGRATING
SCIENCE & MYSTICISM
TRYING TO EXPLAIN IT ALL:
Modern science and the technologies it spawned have produced many wonderful
and amazing things. Thanks to science we have put men on the moon, built powerful
yet inexpensive computers and conquered many diseases; we now live in a world
with many devices that make our life quite comfortable. Modern science describes
the world amazingly well from the cosmic to the subatomic. Yet science alone
cannot explain everything.
Why are we here? What is the ultimate nature of reality? What is the nature of our creator? These questions are beyond the realm of science. Science judges these questions as purely philosophical. So people look to religions for these answers. But people versed in modern science can easily find religions outdated and quaint. Although many aspects of the human condition are universal, modern humans are vastly more sophisticated than their distant ancestors, yet the major worldwide religions rely on doctrine presented millennia ago. It is a testament to the power and usefulness of these major religions that they survived and flourished in an ever-changing and semi-hostile world, while their core messages remain constant.
The timelessness of the Genesis story of creation is due to the story's many levels, which are appreciated by illiterate and primitive populations, today's students, and even Kabbalahists. Yet this beginning of scripture seems strangely out of place when scientists are observing electromagnetic signatures of the universe fractions of a second after the big bang. Thus modern skeptics can easily dismiss the creation story as wrong, or at least inappropriate, and then apply the same sentiments to the rest of religions. By using modern scientific theories to elaborate on religious beliefs, religions become more relevant in today's world and better able to deal with modern issues. The ultimate questions of life need re-answering with 21st century concepts and knowledge.
Likewise, if science and religion both elucidate aspects of reality, infusing science with spirit should bring science a significant step closer to ultimate truths. A thorough integration will then add a new dimension to human knowledge. However, people concerned with the purity of the scientific method may be apprehensive about such a combination. They may fear this alignment slips science back into the morass that enveloped the stereotypical medieval alchemists who apparently produced neither practical knowledge nor spiritual enlightenment. Throughout human history separation rarely existed between scientific and religious etudes. Only during the past few centuries has the scientific method finally fully separated from supernatural influences. Rest assured this book seeks not to influence science but only the motivational philosophies behind science. Therefore, true scientists have nothing to fear, and hopefully even agnostic scientists find this book worthwhile.
In the past few decades many commendable books, often written by accomplished physicists, combined modern science, namely quantum physics, with new ideas of consciousness and the mystic's point of view. Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics and then The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav first presented this theme in the 1970's. From the next decade Nick Herbert's Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics and Faster Than Light: Superluminal Loopholes in Physics and Michael Talbot's Beyond the Quantum and The Holographic Universe helped develop this book. Amit Goswami with his The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World deserves mention for coming close to the central theme of this book by weaving in a metaphysical South Asian influence. Any such authorship deserves praise, as the task requires the author to have significant knowledge in both science and spirit without having become too institutionalized in either field. Combining these two diametrically opposed fields of knowledge is a complex task.
The one subject that draws this task into focus is consciousness. What is consciousness? How is it created? How do people improve it in themselves? How do people ensure some form of their consciousness survives death?
Both science and religion lay claim to this subject. Science probes consciousness through numerous disciplines. Neurobiology dissects and analyzes brains and nervous systems of various creatures. Psychology investigates mental processes and behavior on a systemic level, either using individuals or groups. Various fields including computer science come together to simulate thought processes by designing artificial neural networks or by attaching man-made electronics to live nerve cells. Even though many sophisticated disciplines overlap, expected technologies from mainstream science related to consciousness, such as artificial intelligence, have failed to materialize. Laymen analyzing current scientific progress may get the impression that the situation compares to the story of the blind men discovering an elephant for the first time with each touching a different part and thinking they know the whole. Consciousness is multi-faceted and elusive. Analyzing it is like grabbing a balloon; squeeze the balloon, and it expands elsewhere.
Although science may make some useful progress studying consciousness, such as by developing anti-depression and anti-anxiety drugs, one fundamental problem exists. Science can only analyze physical things, and consciousness itself is not a physical thing. Scientists can only witnesses the effects of consciousness, such as watching the proverbial rat running through the maze or recording what people say they experience when probes stimulate certain portions of their brains. Obviously science routinely employs indirect measurements, but the subjective nature of consciousness makes obtaining objective data for use as scientific evidence tricky. The people whose skulls have been cut open and whose brains are stimulated with electric current could be lying. So scientists must use multiple subjects, apply statistics and perform double blind experiments to squash out subjectivity.
On the other side, religious experience is by its nature subjective, and realistically cannot happen without willing participation of the subject. Opening oneself up to God is about a change in consciousness. Although religions rarely use the term consciousness, it is ultimately the clay with which they sculpt with the hope that something of this sculpture survives death. Whatever survives in the afterlife must be conscious in some way to be worthwhile. Being asleep the whole time in the afterlife is useless. So concepts like soul and spirit directly relate to consciousness.
If consciousness can exist after death, what does that say about how the brain works? But before that question can be answered in a fashion close to acceptable by both science and religion, the boundaries of both disciplines require clarification. Any attempt to combine brain science with metaphysical concepts like soul requires ensuring peace between the concrete institutions of science and the marble institutions of religion. Theoretically science and religion should coexist peacefully, but when each happens to encroach on the other, biases emerge. These biases exhibit themselves as certain habits apparently governed by dogma. These particular dogmas are irrelevant to each institution's main purpose and ultimately serve only to limit these purposes. Each side must compromise slightly and give up these limits.
Science must abdicate its dogma of materialism. The philosophy of materialism states that what is physical is all there is. There was no creator; the universe just happened. All life and thought arises from physical processes; therefore there can be no afterlife. But materialism is not an integral part of scientific methodology, it is just a slightly fashionable belief system. Science should investigate the physical all it wants, but it must not deny alternate realities -such as the existence of a creator- on the basis that such realities cannot be proven.
Likewise, religions must make room for modern interpretations. Messages from God or God's prophets may have been tuned for maximum reception for a particular place and time, and these messages may have become misconstrued over time as languages and cultures evolve. In Genesis 1:28 God instructs his newly created humans, "Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves upon the earth." Humans have done exactly that, but now that people cover the globe, living in harmony with the ecosystem appears more intelligent than unrestrained domination.
The original straightforward commandments still ring quite true today. Yet when churches involve themselves with ethical issues produced by science and technology, things can get awkward. Stem cell research and abortion are scientific activities some churches work to influence public policy to prevent, even though science views these activities as improving human life. These churches base their actions on the ideas that human life begins at conception and all human life is sacred. Yet many of these same churches support politicians and leaders who foment wars destroying much human life. The complexities and opportunities of modern life often make Thou shall not kill open to interpretation. Although religious institutions should be involved in public policy involving moral issues, religions must relinquish claims to scientific knowledge.
Religions must not become blinded by ancient words and not see God as a living presence in everyone and all of creation. Any single scripture-bound religion cannot accurately and relevantly relate God to all the planet's diverse cultures. Ultimately a religion can only remain relevant by providing religious experiences. True religions offer dedicated and persistent seekers paths to direct experience of God. The mystical experience is not the property of any single religion but a global phenomenon. As God cannot accurately be described with words, such an ineffable experience forces people to express it from their own personal and cultural viewpoint.
A well-rounded integration of science and spirit must include the universality of the religious experience and the perspectives of many cultures. Therefore, this book includes indigenous shamanism as a third domain of knowledge. Any hope of reigning in the imperialism of proselytizing religions and the global expansion of science and the technologies and economics it engenders should include that which they both seek to marginalize if not destroy: the native ways of knowledge. Natural, jungle-tested shamanism tempers technical and artificial modern science and the messianic focused religions.
The ignorant can easily claim shamanism as the limited, haphazard religious beliefs of primitive peoples. The remains of the decimation of the religious beliefs and practices of indigenous North and South Americans provide seemingly poor evidence of the various achievements of these once fine and thriving civilizations. However, individuals versed in the centuries old ways still exist. Luckily, some trailblazing investigators have found them and brought the essences of their spirit based systems to the modern reader.
Carlos Castaneda, initially an UCLA anthropology graduate student, deserves praise for his exquisite recording of his apprenticeship with the sorcerer Don Juan Matus. Castaneda's many books, including Journey to Ixtlan, A Separate Reality and The Eagle's Gift, ostensibly present a complete system of knowledge. Although some of his books were written as part of his doctoral dissertation, many people interpret them as fiction, especially considering he never presented the enigmatic Don Juan in person. Other apprentices including Florinda Donner and Ken Eagle Feather also wrote books corroborating and expanding Castaneda's explanation of this Toltec way of knowledge. At their height the Toltecs had as their center the great city of Teotihuacan. Now outside Mexico City, this city, whose name translates to The Place Where Men Become Gods, was inexplicably abandoned by time the Aztecs took it over.
From South America Alberto Villoldo best captured the Inkan spiritual proficiency in his book Shaman, Healer, Sage. Not only does his knowledge from Inkan shamans, descendants of the builders of Machu Pichu, include explanations of the luminous energy body that matches the Toltecs' concepts, his knowledge parallels the concepts of the Hindus' chakras and the Chinese life-energy ch'i. That these and other concepts are so similar and fairly universal among sophisticated ancient healing systems should give patients of Western medicine reason to pause. Indeed, the similarities of mystical experiences and the information obtained therefrom, especially among far-flung primitive societies who had no contact with one other, provide evidence for the validity of these experiences.
How exciting a time this is when modern citizens have access to so many various systems of knowledge and technologies from throughout the world. To subscribe to a view of reality that does not take into account much of this available knowledge is to remain limited. Although skeptics may argue that this book's "kitchen sink" approach is too broad to be useful, hopefully thorough readers find it fits together into a near seamless whole. Readers must remember that religious evidence is mostly subjective and not to be judged using the same rigor as scientific evidence. Readers are not asked to accept anything on pure faith, instead practical, direct personal verification is usually recommended. Although containing many complex topics, this book is written so that reasonably persistent, intelligent and open-minded readers will find it accessible, and thus be able to make up their own minds as to whether this story of reality best reflects the experiences and evidences from their own lives.
Why are we here? What is the ultimate nature of reality? What is the nature of our creator? These questions are beyond the realm of science. Science judges these questions as purely philosophical. So people look to religions for these answers. But people versed in modern science can easily find religions outdated and quaint. Although many aspects of the human condition are universal, modern humans are vastly more sophisticated than their distant ancestors, yet the major worldwide religions rely on doctrine presented millennia ago. It is a testament to the power and usefulness of these major religions that they survived and flourished in an ever-changing and semi-hostile world, while their core messages remain constant.
The timelessness of the Genesis story of creation is due to the story's many levels, which are appreciated by illiterate and primitive populations, today's students, and even Kabbalahists. Yet this beginning of scripture seems strangely out of place when scientists are observing electromagnetic signatures of the universe fractions of a second after the big bang. Thus modern skeptics can easily dismiss the creation story as wrong, or at least inappropriate, and then apply the same sentiments to the rest of religions. By using modern scientific theories to elaborate on religious beliefs, religions become more relevant in today's world and better able to deal with modern issues. The ultimate questions of life need re-answering with 21st century concepts and knowledge.
Likewise, if science and religion both elucidate aspects of reality, infusing science with spirit should bring science a significant step closer to ultimate truths. A thorough integration will then add a new dimension to human knowledge. However, people concerned with the purity of the scientific method may be apprehensive about such a combination. They may fear this alignment slips science back into the morass that enveloped the stereotypical medieval alchemists who apparently produced neither practical knowledge nor spiritual enlightenment. Throughout human history separation rarely existed between scientific and religious etudes. Only during the past few centuries has the scientific method finally fully separated from supernatural influences. Rest assured this book seeks not to influence science but only the motivational philosophies behind science. Therefore, true scientists have nothing to fear, and hopefully even agnostic scientists find this book worthwhile.
In the past few decades many commendable books, often written by accomplished physicists, combined modern science, namely quantum physics, with new ideas of consciousness and the mystic's point of view. Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics and then The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav first presented this theme in the 1970's. From the next decade Nick Herbert's Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics and Faster Than Light: Superluminal Loopholes in Physics and Michael Talbot's Beyond the Quantum and The Holographic Universe helped develop this book. Amit Goswami with his The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World deserves mention for coming close to the central theme of this book by weaving in a metaphysical South Asian influence. Any such authorship deserves praise, as the task requires the author to have significant knowledge in both science and spirit without having become too institutionalized in either field. Combining these two diametrically opposed fields of knowledge is a complex task.
The one subject that draws this task into focus is consciousness. What is consciousness? How is it created? How do people improve it in themselves? How do people ensure some form of their consciousness survives death?
Both science and religion lay claim to this subject. Science probes consciousness through numerous disciplines. Neurobiology dissects and analyzes brains and nervous systems of various creatures. Psychology investigates mental processes and behavior on a systemic level, either using individuals or groups. Various fields including computer science come together to simulate thought processes by designing artificial neural networks or by attaching man-made electronics to live nerve cells. Even though many sophisticated disciplines overlap, expected technologies from mainstream science related to consciousness, such as artificial intelligence, have failed to materialize. Laymen analyzing current scientific progress may get the impression that the situation compares to the story of the blind men discovering an elephant for the first time with each touching a different part and thinking they know the whole. Consciousness is multi-faceted and elusive. Analyzing it is like grabbing a balloon; squeeze the balloon, and it expands elsewhere.
Although science may make some useful progress studying consciousness, such as by developing anti-depression and anti-anxiety drugs, one fundamental problem exists. Science can only analyze physical things, and consciousness itself is not a physical thing. Scientists can only witnesses the effects of consciousness, such as watching the proverbial rat running through the maze or recording what people say they experience when probes stimulate certain portions of their brains. Obviously science routinely employs indirect measurements, but the subjective nature of consciousness makes obtaining objective data for use as scientific evidence tricky. The people whose skulls have been cut open and whose brains are stimulated with electric current could be lying. So scientists must use multiple subjects, apply statistics and perform double blind experiments to squash out subjectivity.
On the other side, religious experience is by its nature subjective, and realistically cannot happen without willing participation of the subject. Opening oneself up to God is about a change in consciousness. Although religions rarely use the term consciousness, it is ultimately the clay with which they sculpt with the hope that something of this sculpture survives death. Whatever survives in the afterlife must be conscious in some way to be worthwhile. Being asleep the whole time in the afterlife is useless. So concepts like soul and spirit directly relate to consciousness.
If consciousness can exist after death, what does that say about how the brain works? But before that question can be answered in a fashion close to acceptable by both science and religion, the boundaries of both disciplines require clarification. Any attempt to combine brain science with metaphysical concepts like soul requires ensuring peace between the concrete institutions of science and the marble institutions of religion. Theoretically science and religion should coexist peacefully, but when each happens to encroach on the other, biases emerge. These biases exhibit themselves as certain habits apparently governed by dogma. These particular dogmas are irrelevant to each institution's main purpose and ultimately serve only to limit these purposes. Each side must compromise slightly and give up these limits.
Science must abdicate its dogma of materialism. The philosophy of materialism states that what is physical is all there is. There was no creator; the universe just happened. All life and thought arises from physical processes; therefore there can be no afterlife. But materialism is not an integral part of scientific methodology, it is just a slightly fashionable belief system. Science should investigate the physical all it wants, but it must not deny alternate realities -such as the existence of a creator- on the basis that such realities cannot be proven.
Likewise, religions must make room for modern interpretations. Messages from God or God's prophets may have been tuned for maximum reception for a particular place and time, and these messages may have become misconstrued over time as languages and cultures evolve. In Genesis 1:28 God instructs his newly created humans, "Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living creature that moves upon the earth." Humans have done exactly that, but now that people cover the globe, living in harmony with the ecosystem appears more intelligent than unrestrained domination.
The original straightforward commandments still ring quite true today. Yet when churches involve themselves with ethical issues produced by science and technology, things can get awkward. Stem cell research and abortion are scientific activities some churches work to influence public policy to prevent, even though science views these activities as improving human life. These churches base their actions on the ideas that human life begins at conception and all human life is sacred. Yet many of these same churches support politicians and leaders who foment wars destroying much human life. The complexities and opportunities of modern life often make Thou shall not kill open to interpretation. Although religious institutions should be involved in public policy involving moral issues, religions must relinquish claims to scientific knowledge.
Religions must not become blinded by ancient words and not see God as a living presence in everyone and all of creation. Any single scripture-bound religion cannot accurately and relevantly relate God to all the planet's diverse cultures. Ultimately a religion can only remain relevant by providing religious experiences. True religions offer dedicated and persistent seekers paths to direct experience of God. The mystical experience is not the property of any single religion but a global phenomenon. As God cannot accurately be described with words, such an ineffable experience forces people to express it from their own personal and cultural viewpoint.
A well-rounded integration of science and spirit must include the universality of the religious experience and the perspectives of many cultures. Therefore, this book includes indigenous shamanism as a third domain of knowledge. Any hope of reigning in the imperialism of proselytizing religions and the global expansion of science and the technologies and economics it engenders should include that which they both seek to marginalize if not destroy: the native ways of knowledge. Natural, jungle-tested shamanism tempers technical and artificial modern science and the messianic focused religions.
The ignorant can easily claim shamanism as the limited, haphazard religious beliefs of primitive peoples. The remains of the decimation of the religious beliefs and practices of indigenous North and South Americans provide seemingly poor evidence of the various achievements of these once fine and thriving civilizations. However, individuals versed in the centuries old ways still exist. Luckily, some trailblazing investigators have found them and brought the essences of their spirit based systems to the modern reader.
Carlos Castaneda, initially an UCLA anthropology graduate student, deserves praise for his exquisite recording of his apprenticeship with the sorcerer Don Juan Matus. Castaneda's many books, including Journey to Ixtlan, A Separate Reality and The Eagle's Gift, ostensibly present a complete system of knowledge. Although some of his books were written as part of his doctoral dissertation, many people interpret them as fiction, especially considering he never presented the enigmatic Don Juan in person. Other apprentices including Florinda Donner and Ken Eagle Feather also wrote books corroborating and expanding Castaneda's explanation of this Toltec way of knowledge. At their height the Toltecs had as their center the great city of Teotihuacan. Now outside Mexico City, this city, whose name translates to The Place Where Men Become Gods, was inexplicably abandoned by time the Aztecs took it over.
From South America Alberto Villoldo best captured the Inkan spiritual proficiency in his book Shaman, Healer, Sage. Not only does his knowledge from Inkan shamans, descendants of the builders of Machu Pichu, include explanations of the luminous energy body that matches the Toltecs' concepts, his knowledge parallels the concepts of the Hindus' chakras and the Chinese life-energy ch'i. That these and other concepts are so similar and fairly universal among sophisticated ancient healing systems should give patients of Western medicine reason to pause. Indeed, the similarities of mystical experiences and the information obtained therefrom, especially among far-flung primitive societies who had no contact with one other, provide evidence for the validity of these experiences.
How exciting a time this is when modern citizens have access to so many various systems of knowledge and technologies from throughout the world. To subscribe to a view of reality that does not take into account much of this available knowledge is to remain limited. Although skeptics may argue that this book's "kitchen sink" approach is too broad to be useful, hopefully thorough readers find it fits together into a near seamless whole. Readers must remember that religious evidence is mostly subjective and not to be judged using the same rigor as scientific evidence. Readers are not asked to accept anything on pure faith, instead practical, direct personal verification is usually recommended. Although containing many complex topics, this book is written so that reasonably persistent, intelligent and open-minded readers will find it accessible, and thus be able to make up their own minds as to whether this story of reality best reflects the experiences and evidences from their own lives.