State Posts

The Fourth Round of our Forum both widens and deepens the ground covered in the previous three Rounds.

Hiroshi Tasaka, the Japanese poet-scientist—a distinguished economist in his own right—affirms that, in the dialectical process championed already by Hegel, opposites fuse in a higher union. This will be the fate also of science and spirituality: opposites today, yet fused in a higher union tomorrow.  In order to help this process (Hegel would have called it, to be the midwife of its historical dialectic) Tasaka advocates three distinct but complementary strategies. The first concerns natural science, and points to the nearly miraculous facts discovered by cosmology as a way to inspire a truly spiritual sense of wonder.  The second regards the science of psychology, and calls on psychologists to draw on the wisdom of centuries developed in the spiritual traditions to complement the scientific search for the comprehension of such phenomena as, for instance, “the collective subconscious.”  The third strategy is for social scientists to combine the manifestations of the Internet revolution with their own economic science and move in the 21^st century beyond the classical doctrines toward a more humane “compassion capitalism.”

The cross-fertilization of cutting-edge science and traditional spirituality is also the subject of the visionary and deeply spiritual—yet eminently rational—contribution of James O’Dea.  He highlights the facile and entirely mistaken tendency of some observers to leap to metaphysical/theological conclusions in considering the staggering findings of high-energy physics.  Can the data from a supercollider throw light on the existence (or non-existence) of God?  Neither Plato nor David Bohm would have agreed.  The problem remains to overcome the inherent reductionism of the narrow interpretation of scientific findings and find the way to reconcile it with the experience of being in a living universe.  There are ways of knowing that open profound states of unity and ecstatic awareness far beyond the ken of science. All the more reason, I should add, for trying to facilitate the dialectical fusion of science and spirituality advocated by Tasaka…!

The next contribution to this Round comes from one of the most noted visionary-scientists of our time: the anthropologist/noosphere researcher Jose Arguelles.  In his view the noosphere is that state of transformed order in the affairs of humanity that constitutes the necessary stepping stone to a radically new world—a new civilization with a different consciousness.  For Arguelles it is the discipline of “geoesthetics”—a planetary science/art—that is called upon to transform the Earth into a work of art, establishing our connection with the universe.

Where do all these wide-ranging explorations really meet?  The well-known journalist and Internet-blogger Alison Rose Levy gives an answer: they meet in the curiosity that underlies all inquiry into nature and experience, whether in the spiritual or in the scientific domain. She invites us to shed every shadow of dogmatism, whether in religion or in science, to overcome everything that would limit the ranging of our deep curiosity over the terrains that we are to explore. We need to bring together the inner and the outer dimensions of our existence and experience—the spiritual and the scientific—and range throughout the experiential and existential domains of the personal, the interpersonal, and the collective.

In this Round, the same as in the previous Rounds, no easy answers are given.  But a consensus comes gradually to light: today we live in two worlds, in two cultures. Finding the way to connect them, and ultimately to fuse them, is an unsolved challenge.  But it is one that we need to perceive and to accept, for the meeting of science and spirituality remains one of the fundamental preconditions of our life and well-being—and even of our survival, on this mindlessly ravaged and deeply disoriented planet.

The second round of our Forum’s discussions offers deep but entirely rational statements of the nature of spirituality, and throws fresh light on the factor that could link spirituality with science: a more evolved consciousness.

Swami Kriyananda, a man who has spent a lifetime searching for truth and meaning through the spiritual experience, takes a detached view of this experience and offers an assessment of it that is clear and free of preconceptions—it could as well have come from a scientist. The difference between science and spirituality is the difference between experience based on belief and one rooted in the assessment of sensory information. Kriyananda makes a brilliant case for showing that even the pronouncements of science have an element of belief, and the doctrines and dogmas of spirituality and religion have, conversely, a basis in sensory experience. The key difference lies in science’s attempt to eliminate feeling from experience and base itself purely on logic. Yet the element of feeling is part of our self-awareness, and without an awareness of the thinking subject of his or her experience no description or comprehension of experience can be full and trustworthy.

In the final count, both science and spirituality are based on human experience, but on different facets of this experience. This is a profound insight that, in the search for reconciliation between these two great strands of human culture and experience, need to be kept well in mind.

The great Indian teacher Sri Sri Ravi Shankar describes another facet of the difference between science and religion. He, too, agrees that both are based on experience, but while science explores the external world and asks, “what is it,” spiritual experience is focused on the inner world and asks, “who am I.” In traditional cultures these aspects of human experience are not in conflict; they complement each other.  The inner-directed exploration of experience brings to the fore our intimate connection with the larger world around us: the world of nature. But in today’s externally-directed views the sense of this connection has been lost; no wonder that we are polluting and destroying our environment. The need is to return to the traditional practices of honoring and conserving nature, recovering the complementarity between the outer and the inner facets of our experience. Sri Sri Ravis Shankar offers simple and meaningful principles that help us elevate our consciousness to achieve this paramount end.

The key to reconciling the opposition between science and spirituality is the elevation of our own consciousness, so we could comprehend that the inner and outer facets of human experience are not opposed to each other, but are complementary parts of a larger whole.

Human experience is mediated by consciousness, and a better understanding of consciousness shows that both the spiritual experience and the experience of the scientist are bona fide experiences. The occurrence of spiritual experience can be grasped by the method of the sciences. The latest findings indicate that human consciousness includes elements that derive from processes of quantum resonance between perceiving subject and perceived object. British scientist Kingsley Dennis cites recent experimental evidence that shows that the whole organism is a quantum-resonating nonlocal field. There is instantaneous intercommunication throughout the field—which explains the fabulous coherence of every part of the living organism with every other part—as well as between this field and the fields that surround the organism: in the final count, the whole universe. We are “entangled” with each other and with the rest of the world. This perennial insight of the spiritual teachings can now be grounded in the theories of the sciences and should encourage us to overcome the opposition between science and spirituality. Rather than dismissing each others’ views, we should draw upon the best insights of both spirituality and science.

Japanese scientist and software designer Shinichi Takemura discusses a surprising aspect of consciousness: the emergence of a kind of collective consciousness created by people equipped with electronic sensors. This “planetary consciousness” arises as individual humans report on conditions around them using cell-phones or other devices, and is enriched also by automated devices installed inter alia in automobiles. This multi-human and multi-technology system pieces together a large picture of conditions on the planet from in-themselves tiny fragments, like assembling a jig-saw puzzle. The development of this global-level consciousness offers a new way for realizing an objective that is common to both science and spirituality: to sense our environment, and to keep it within the limits of human wellbeing and livability.

Two famous scientists and two renowned spiritual leaders are the protagonists of our opening round.

Medical doctor and eminent wellness advisor Deepak Chopra speaks of a war between religion and science and wisely seeks to steer clear of its worst expressions: the claims of those who try to defend religion and spirituality by attacking science, and the claims of those who try to defend science by attacking spirituality. The distinguished physical scientist Rustum Roy points an accusing finger on these misguided voices: they do not come from real scientists and do not represent the bulk of the working science community. Such grossly imprecise, sloppy statements amount to no less than a crime. Deepak notes that the war must, and ultimately will, find resolution in the recognition that at the base of both science and spirituality there is consciousness; and a true understanding of consciousness will show that there is no conflict between them. Consciousness is primary; it’s the ground of all we experience.

The spiritual leaders who come at this issue from the other side testify that the religious and spiritual experience is real and credible. World-renowned spiritual guide Jean Houston outlines how anyone who is ready and willing can enter into these deeper domains of the psyche that, at their deepest level, make up the mystical experience. Her affirmation is echoed and illuminated by charismatic spiritual leader Michael Beckwith. Just as Jean speaks of the “mystical experience,” so Michael speaks of the experience of “extended awareness.” He affirms that the spiritual realms of human experience are woven into the very fabric of our physical and biological existence.

Ultimately, spirituality and science come together in the realization that, at its deepest and most genuine expressions, our experience is an experience of the oneness that characterizes all of reality. Michael calls this the One Mind, and for scientists it’s at the root of the coherence underlying all observed phenomena, a coherence that physicists searching for a “theory of everything” seek to express in a master formula similar to, yet still more embracing than, Einstein’s famous E = mc².

So, we start by acknowledging the war between spirituality and science and demonstrate how confusion and dischord reign supreme, but we end by focusing squarely on the legitimacy of spiritual experience and the desperate need for a science based on its exploration.

I hope you will join us in the discussion of this First Round by adding your comments and ideas. And again, welcome to new thinking.