Between Science and Spirituality

The Chronicle of Higher Education ^ | Nov. 29, 2002 | John Horgan

[beckett]

Between Science and Spirituality

By JOHN HORGAN

Can mystical spirituality be reconciled with science and, more broadly, with reason? To paraphrase the mystical philosopher Ken Wilber, is the East's version of enlightenment compatible with that of the West? If so, what sort of truth would a rational mysticism give us? What sort of consolation?

There are many claimed convergences between science and mysticism. Cognitive psychology supposedly corroborates the Buddhist doctrine that the self is an illusion. Quantum mechanics, which implies that the outcomes of certain microevents depend on how we measure them, is said to confirm the mystical intuition that consciousness is an intrinsic part of reality. Similarly, quantum nonlocality, which Einstein disparaged as "spooky action at a distance," clinches mystics' perception of the interrelatedness, or unity, of all things. I see a different point of convergence between science and mysticism: Each in its own way reveals the miraculousness of our existence.

The more science learns about the origin and history of the cosmos and of life on earth and of Homo sapiens, the more it reveals how staggeringly improbable we are. First there is the fact of existence itself. The big-bang theory represents a profound insight into the history and structure of the cosmos, but it cannot tell us why creation occurred in the first place. Particle physics suggests that empty space is seething with virtual particles, which spring into existence for an instant before vanishing. In the same way, some physicists speculate, the entire universe might have begun as a kind of virtual particle. Honest physicists will admit that they have no idea why there is something rather than nothing. After all, what produced the quantum forces that supposedly made creation possible? "No one is certain what happened before the Big Bang, or even if the question has any meaning," Steven Weinberg, the physicist and Nobel laureate, wrote recently.

Next questions: Why does the universe look this way rather than some other way? Why does it adhere to these laws of nature rather than to some other laws? Altering any of the universe's fundamental parameters would have radically altered reality. For example, if the cosmos had been slightly more dense at its inception, it would have quickly collapsed into a black hole.

A smidgen less dense, and it would have flown apart so fast that there would have been no chance for stars, galaxies, and planets to form. Cosmologists sometimes call this the fine-tuning problem, or, more colorfully, the Goldilocks dilemma: How did the density of the universe turn out not too high, not too low, but just right?

The odds that matter would have precisely its observed density, the physicist Lawrence Krauss has calculated, are as great as the odds of guessing precisely how many atoms there are in the sun. Some physicists are so troubled by the arbitrariness of the cosmos that they espouse a quasi-theological concept known as the anthropic principle. According to this notion, the universe must have the structure we observe, because otherwise we wouldn't be here to observe it. The anthropic principle is cosmology's version of creationism.

The next improbability is life. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins once declared that life "is a mystery no longer," because Darwin solved it with his theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet life is as mysterious as ever, in spite of all the insights provided by evolutionary theory and more-recent biological paradigms, such as genetics and molecular biology. Neither Darwinism nor any other scientific theory tells us why life appeared on earth in the first place, or whether it was probable or a once-in-eternity fluke.

Many scientists have argued that life must be a ubiquitous phenomenon that pervades the universe, but they can offer precious little empirical evidence to support that assertion. After decades of searching, astronomers have found no signs of life elsewhere in the cosmos; a 1996 report of fossilized microbes in a meteorite from Mars turned out to be erroneous. Researchers still cannot make matter animate in the laboratory, even with all the tools of biotechnology. In fact, the more scientists ponder life's origin, the harder it is to imagine how it occurred. Francis Crick once stated that "the origin of life appears to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have to be satisfied to get it going." In his book Life Itself, Crick offered the speculation that the seeds of life might have been planted on earth by an alien civilization.

Once life on earth started evolving, many scientists have contended, it was only a matter of time before natural selection produced a species as intelligent as Homo sapiens. But for more than 80 percent of life's 3.5-billion-year history, the earth's biota consisted entirely of single-celled organisms, like bacteria and algae. So not even the simplest multicellular organisms were inevitable. The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould has estimated that if the great experiment of life were rerun a million times over, chances are that it would never again give rise to mammals, let alone mammals intelligent enough to invent negative theology and television. Similar reasoning led the eminent evolutionary theorist Ernst Mayr to conclude that the SETI program -- the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which scans the heavens for radio signals from other civilizations -- is futile.

Multiply all of these improbabilities and they spike to infinity. As the psychologist Susan Blackmore has pointed out, we are bad at judging probabilities, hence prone to make too much of chance events; that is why we believe in ESP, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and other miracles. I do not believe in miracles, at least not defined in the conventional religious manner as divine disruptions of the natural order. But if a miracle is defined as an infinitely improbable phenomenon, then our existence is a miracle, which no theory natural or supernatural will ever explain.

Scientists may go much further in plumbing nature's secrets. They may decipher the neural code, the secret language of the brain. They may arrive at a plausible explanation of how life emerged on earth, and they may discover life elsewhere in the cosmos. They may find and verify a unified theory of physics, which will provide a more precise picture of the origin and history of the universe. Although there are good reasons for doubting the likelihood of such scientific advances, they cannot be ruled out. What can be ruled out is that science will answer the ultimate question: How did something come from nothing? Neither superstring theory nor any other of science's so-called theories of everything can resolve that mystery, any more than our supernatural theologies can.

Although we can never solve the riddle of existence, we can never stop trying. We must keep reimagining our relationship to the infinite. Skepticism alone --- and the cold, hard facts of science --- cannot serve as the basis for spirituality. Blackmore, a practicing Zen Buddhist, helped me reach that conclusion. She described Zen as a kind of rubbish-removal system that cleanses the mind of extraneous beliefs and emotions so that we can see reality as it truly is.

I found Blackmore's garbage metaphor appealing at first, because it provided a handy criterion for judging theories and theologies. The worst ones, I decided, distract us from the reality right in front of us by postulating parallel dimensions and universes, heavens and hells, gods and ghosts and demiurges and extraterrestrials. Too much garbage! Viewed this way, skepticism appears to be the ideal spiritual perspective. Skepticism clears away cumbersome beliefs on an intellectual level, just as meditation (ideally) clears away beliefs, emotions, and thoughts on a more experiential level. Skepticism can help us achieve mystical deautomatization, or so I wanted to believe.

My handling of real rather than metaphorical garbage gradually gave me a more complicated view of the matter. In my kitchen, we put garbage in bags that come in boxes of 20. After I yank the last bag from a box, the box itself becomes trash, which I put into the bag. Sometime after I interviewed Blackmore, every time I pulled the last bag from the box and stuffed the box in the bag, I intuited a paradox lurking within this ritual.

I went through more garbage bags than I care to mention before I solved the riddle: Every garbage-removal system generates garbage. Zen apparently works as an efficient garbage-removal system for Susan Blackmore. But as minimalistic as it is, Zen clutters more than it clarifies my mind. Once I started down this line of thinking, it was hard to stop. I began looking askance at skepticism, too. Maybe skepticism, instead of cleansing our vision, just substitutes one type of trash for another. Instead of belief in reincarnation, angels, ESP, extraterrestrials, parallel universes, and the Oedipus complex, the skeptic crams his mind with disbelief in reincarnation, angels, and so on.

The problem is that any truth or antitruth, no matter how initially revelatory and awe-inspiring, sooner or later turns into garbage that occludes our vision of the living world. Ludwig Wittgenstein had this problem in mind when he described his philosophy as a ladder that we should "throw away" after we have climbed it. At its best, art -- by which I mean poetry, literature, music, movies, painting, sculpture -- works in this manner. Art, the lie that tells the truth, is intrinsically ironic. Like Wittgenstein's ladder, it helps us get to another level and then falls away. What better way to approach the mystical, the truth that cannot be told?

At a scholarly meeting on mysticism I attended in Chicago, one speaker warned that if we can't talk about mysticism, we can't whistle about it, either. In other words, all our modes of expression, including art, fall short of mystical truth. But unlike more-literal modes of expression, art comes closer to uttering the unutterable by acknowledging its own insufficiency. It gives us not answers but questions. That does not mean mystical insights cannot be expressed within other modes of knowledge, like science, philosophy, theology -- and, of course, journalism. But we should view even the most fact-laden mystical texts ironically when they turn to ultimate questions. Some mystical writers, notably the psychedelic raconteur Terence McKenna, supply their own irony, but we readers can supply it even if the author intended none. We can read the Upanishads, Genesis, Dionysius the Areopagite, and the neurotheological suppositions of Andrew Newberg just as we read Blake or Borges or Emily Dickinson.

Viewed ironically, even the most fantastical ghost stories, including the old stories of religion, can serve a purpose. Whether they postulate superintelligent clouds of gas, insectoid aliens in hyperspace, a demiurge with multiple-personality disorder, or a loving God who for inscrutable reasons makes us suffer, well-told ghost stories can remind us of the unfathomable mystery at the heart of things. Our creation myths and eschatologies, our imaginings of ultimate beginnings and ends, can also help us discover our deepest fears and desires. But even the most sophisticated theologies and theories should never be mistaken for ultimate truth. What Voltaire said centuries ago still holds, and will always hold: "It is truly extravagant to define God, angels, and minds, and to know precisely why God defined the world, when we do not know why we move our arms at will. Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one."

ther than art, is there any method particularly suited to evoking mystical awe without the side effects that so often attend it? In Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, first published in 1979, Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar suggested that the chief benefit of psychedelics is "enriching the wonder of normality" -- that is, enhancing our appreciation of ordinary consciousness and ordinary life. That is the spiritual value cited most often by advocates of psychedelics. But those compounds can have the opposite effect. This world may seem drab in comparison to the bizarre virtual realms into which LSD or DMT propel us. Instead of opening our eyes to the miraculousness of everyday reality and consciousness, psychedelics can blind us.

All mystical technologies that induce powerful altered states pose this risk. One mystical expert who has reached this conclusion is Jean Houston. A pioneer of the human-potential movement, she works as a kind of spiritual psychotherapist, usually for large groups rather than individuals. She seeks to rejuvenate her clients' psyches through dance, song, chanting, guided imagery, and role-playing, often with a mythological dimension. She and her husband, the anthropologist Robert Masters, proclaimed in 1966 that investigations of LSD and similar drugs could help human consciousness expand "beyond its present limitations and on towards capacities not yet realized and perhaps undreamed of."

Houston subsequently became quite critical of the via psychedelica. "l am by nature not pro-drug," she told me. Timothy Leary was one of the most charming people she had ever met -- and one of the most irresponsible. Too many people lured onto the psychedelic path by this Pied Piper suffered breakdowns and ended up in mental hospitals, Houston said. "If I were to take the American pragmatic tradition and say, 'By their fruits ye shall know them,' then I'd have to say I haven't seen too much evidence" that psychedelics promote a healthy spirituality. "Some might say it is a shortcut to reality. But the fact is, it doesn't seem to sustain that reality."

Houston's disillusionment with psychedelics led her to seek safer means of self-transcendence. In the early 1970s, she and Masters devised what they called the altered states of consciousness induction device, or ASCID. It consisted of a suspension harness in which blindfolded subjects could spin around in three dimensions. The contraption worked so well that Houston and Masters discontinued its use. "People would get addicted to it and even refuse to explore their inner states without first taking a ride," Houston recalled. The experience reinforced her suspicion that any spiritual practice or path -- particularly those emphasizing altered states -- can become an end in itself, which leads us away from reality rather than toward it.

Anything that helps you see --- really see --- the wondrousness of the world serves a mystical purpose. According to Zen legend, when a visitor asked the 15th-century master Ikkyu to write down a maxim of "the highest wisdom," Ikkyu wrote one word: "Attention." Irritated, the visitor asked, "Is that all?" This time, Ikkyu wrote two words: "Attention. Attention." Fortunately, life itself is so wildly weird and improbable that sooner or later it is bound to get our attention. And if life doesn't grab our attention, death will. Whenever death intrudes upon our lives, we feel the chill of the deep space in which we are suspended.

Spiritual seekers have employed mementos mori, like a human skull, to keep themselves mindful of death. An extreme version of this technique, used in certain Buddhist sects, involves sitting next to or on top of a rotting corpse. It seems that this practice may merely desensitize you to death rather than sensitize you to life. Moreover, dwelling on death, the abyss, nothingness, may convince you that it is the only abiding reality, and that all finite, time-bound phenomena, including our mortal selves, are ephemeral and hence, in some sense, unreal. To be enlightened, Ken Wilber once wrote, is "to snap out of the movie of life." This is perhaps the greatest danger posed by mysticism -- that you will be left with a permanent case of derealization and depersonalization.

If you are lucky, your glimpse of the abyss will make this life seem more real, not less. You will feel what Albert Hofmann -- the chemist who, in 1943, discovered the psychotropic properties of LSD -- felt after emerging from the psilocybin trip in which he had found himself all alone in a ghost town inside the earth. When he returned from this hellish solitude, back to the world and his dear friends, he felt "reborn," and he was overcome with gratitude and joy at the "wonderful life we have here."

This is by far the greatest gift that mystical experiences can bestow on us: to see -- really see -- all that is right with the world. Just as believers in a beneficent deity should be haunted by the problem of natural evil, so gnostics, atheists, pessimists, and nihilists should be haunted by the problem of friendship, love, beauty, truth, humor, compassion, fun. Never forget the problem of fun.

John Horgan writes about science. This article is adapted from his book Rational Mysticism: Dispatches From the Border Between Science and Spirituality, to be published in January by Houghton Mifflin. Copyright © 2003 by John Horgan.

[Hank Kerchief]

Since science and reason are inherently agnostic

Without reason it is not possible to know anything. One is agnostic to the exact degree they repudiate or evade reason.

(Of course, you are probably using the word agnostic in the very narrow theological sense. I am not constrained by your narrow usage.)

Hank

[f.Christian]

To: edsheppa

Me: It could logically be self evident to some that natural causes do not explain even the most obvious thing in ones life, i.e. consciousness.

You: That sounds contradictory or maybe I just don't take your meaning. How can something be logical and self-evident? Self evidence requires no argument but logic does.

It is a given even for a child that he/she is a conscious individual and logically so. But beyond this, should truth be logical as well? If not, it seems logic should dismiss it as truth. (as you pointed out)

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
-Preamble to the Declaration of Independence
(although self-evident was originally “sacred and undeniable”)

Oh, but I seem to have digressed once again. Western science and thought were based on the theory of design. In science, sure they observed natural causation but from an engineering standpoint. In thought, it was believed that free-will is part of a plan and choice should not be imposed. (Now exceptions can be presented but I believe they can be distinguished from an individual belief and the entire philosophy or theology)

Now back to ‘how do we detect design?’ We use our consciousness to detect design and IMHO our consciousness cannot be explained by naturalistic causes and definitely not by material causes.

I read your text, detect design, transcription takes place, I respond. This is intelligent design from man (not to mention the means by which this is taking place). Now, no one denies that DNA contains information but beyond this; transcription takes place, it responds, and builds in a precise sequence based on inside stimuli and outside stimuli. IMHO this is design. Again, I do this with my consciousness but within your self-consciousness you can deny this and attempt to explain it another way.

Let’s do a little ‘Zen thing’ here – I know you are familiar with ‘If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around, does it make any noise?’ Let’s take it to a different level, ‘If a universe exists without life or intelligent life, does information exist?’ Regardless if you believe information exists in that universe, the information would be meaningless for that universe (and you must use your consciousness to determine this one way or another for a universe without consciousness). Take this random, meaningless universe; ‘just add humans’, and why does or should this change the universe? Consciousness? So now we are able to view this universe… This expanded reality doesn’t sound like a boon, more like a boondoggle. (But it seems that I have digressed again)

So we use our consciousness to give us an acceptable explanation and meaning to the universe and our existence. Our explanations are thoughts and for the materialist, these thoughts must also be material processes. This takes away the “I” or “self” in our own consciousness and shifts it to matter or nature. For the materialist, since human consciousness exists, nature somehow has formed individual ‘ I’s ‘ to observe all random events.

I see everything as designed, planned, and for purpose. It is self-evident and logical IMHO.


1169 posted on 12/06/2002 7:09 PM PST by Heartlander

[Hank Kerchief]

A completely idiotic post which makes wholly unsupported assumptions...

Could be. Name one!

(How come someone so philosophically astute gets so easily excited?)

Hank

[freedumb2003]

At last, as real response. Good to see you out from behind the curtain :)

[f.Christian]

My disgruntalier is the latest one out---I got the wires crossed!

[Hank Kerchief]

I would like to respond to your post, but have a little trouble from the beginning. Would you explain what you mean by the following sentence:

It is a given even for a child that he/she is a conscious individual and logically so.

My question has to do with the intent of the sentence. I am particularly confused by the phrase "a conscious individual and logically so. My cat is conscious, but not logical. I do not believe newborns are capable of logic (or reason) and therefore, at that point have no knowledge (neither does my cat, for the smae reason).

Just for the record, nothing is self-evident, if by self-evident one means knowledge of any kind. A perception is not knowledge.

I may have completely misunderstand your meaning, however, so correct me if I've missed your point.

Hank

[Hank Kerchief]

...concepts of math have routinely predicted the existence and behavior of the material universe...

The predictions do not make it happen. The predictions would only be predictions if the material universe happens to conform to them. Science and math can only discover what is. Neither is a cause of anything, with the possible exception of some student's headache.

Hank

[Gary Boldwater]

You sir, are a man who thinks. I would be proud to shake your hand. A is A, existence exists.

[beckett]

Look, Ayn "To Be Anti-smoking is To Be Anti-life!" Rand's A = A is fine as far as it goes. Yes, there is an objective reality out there. And yes, A = A throughout the knowable universe. But Rand's problem, a direct outgrowth of her grandiosity (the same grandiosty that impelled he to announce her atheism at 14, setting the course for a lifelong suppression of the emotional abuse she suffered as a child, which, in turn, lead directly to her over-reliance on and over-hyping of the power of reason), is that she assigns meaning to A = A far beyond its utility. It's fine, but in the end it is a banal observation.

The very certainty of Objectivism discredits it. You either understand that or you don't.

[f.Christian]

bttt

[MHGinTN]

I will apologize for addressing this to you, but I made a choice ... ignore me and it will not offend moi.

From the essay: After decades of searching, astronomers have found no signs of life elsewhere in the cosmos; Electromagnetic waves have been the object of the search. It's logical since light is bounding all over the universe and the radio wave lengths are also. So far, as best science can tell, not a single repeating source has the feel of an intelligence directed signal. Let's look at that for a moment.

How long have we been capable of generating electromagnetic signals that would traverse space? How much longer will we be limited by the necessity to generate electromagnetic signals? Are the particular signals we generate and in turn search for from the cosmos the last developmental stage of signal generation, or merely one stage in our evolving understanding of the physical realities of the universe?

Is there some next stage in our understanding that will cause us to then search the cosmos for those type of signals? I ask this seemingly nonsensical question from the framework of our past signal generations and information sharing ... smoke signals work if the sender and observer are co-aware/knowledgable, but the medium of light (specific range of electromagnetic waves) is at the heart of the process. A radio begs the capability somewhere of someone able to generate radio waves to be received.

Our reliance on electromagnetic wave generation and reception assumes that if other intelligent creatures in the cosmos exist and learn of electromagnetic wave manipulation, they too would send and eventually seek to receive signals from other intelligent creatures. For how long have they been sending, intentionally or unintentionally?.. it won't matter for our search. Would these signals generated traverse the cosmos in a sort of expanding pattern and thus have a limit of reach based on how long they've been sending? Yes, and that may be one of the limiting factors for why we have yet to discover the signals ... intelligent life reaching the proper level of technical ability may be sparse, so it may be a while yet before a signal generated would reach us.

There are mathematical calculations which would generate statistical probabilities and time frames for arising intelligence and technical capabilities, to generate in turn a window of likelihood for our receiving extra-terrestrial signals. We have yet to detect, but that doesn't imply we never will, even if our reliance on electromagnetic wave generation may someday give way to a more sophisticated paradigm than electromagnetic energy for our processes ... there should be electromagnetic waves zipping about the cosmos from other intelligences even if those others have moved on to more sophisticated paradigms.

Now, that tedious flow out of the way, what do we make of the witnesses who've described interactions with Angels? I'm not inclined to dismiss those described events as imagination, yet we don't appear to have the same phenomena occurring in this modern, science oriented world. For arguments sake, lets accept that those events actually occurred and were not merely schizophrenic anomolies, but were real visitations. Just for discussion purposes, if you're so inclined.

The physical implications of such visitations beg for an as yet undiscovered means to manipulate electromagnetic energy send-and-receive systems, simply because these visitors appear and disappear! This dismisses the notion of supernatural occurrence and puts the discussion on a physics level, for the supernatural is just that, 'beyond our natural' as we define it at that stage in our development ... to shorten this screed, our science may not be sufficiently developed to detect this 'natural' level of phenomena generation or blocking of electromagnetic waves for our detection. A character in one of my books has as her hobby an effort to try and discover how God did the mircales described in scriptures, not as a blasphemy, for she doesn't think God is offended by our searching to discover more of Him and His universe, she tries for explanations based on her level of scientific understanding, and to stretch her extent of knowledge. If we don't make such efforts (try to imagine how things are done), perhaps we will be stuck with forever trying to detect electromagnetic signals, a search that will eventually detect one or more but it may well take a very much longer time. By taking such an approach as assuming miracles are beyond our explanation merely because we haven't learned enough about the nature of the universe, we may discover a next stage/reality level in the fundamental design of the universe of the Creator's composition in which we dwell.

The argument can be offered that humankind's development has generated science as a means to better comprehend the Creator's handiwork.

[Gary Boldwater]

Mathematics is the science of measurement. It can't predict anything if the problem is ill-posed.

[Heartlander]

Just for the record, nothing is self-evident, if by self-evident one means knowledge of any kind. A perception is not knowledge.

Must one learn they are conscious before they know they exist? If anything is self-evident it is ones own consciousness. (Did people wander aimlessly before, “I think therefore I am?”) Furthermore, try to obtain knowledge without perception.

[beckett]

Nihil Obstat :-)

[Sabertooth]

Without reason it is not possible to know anything.

Again, how do you know? It's not a kid's question.

One is agnostic to the exact degree they repudiate or evade reason.

(Of course, you are probably using the word agnostic in the very narrow theological sense. I am not constrained by your narrow usage.)

OK. Can you define your non-theological usage?

[Sabertooth]

The physical implications of such visitations beg for an as yet undiscovered means to manipulate electromagnetic energy send-and-receive systems, simply because these visitors appear and disappear! This dismisses the notion of supernatural occurrence and puts the discussion on a physics level, for the supernatural is just that, 'beyond our natural' as we define it at that stage in our development ... to shorten this screed, our science may not be sufficiently developed to detect this 'natural' level of phenomena generation or blocking of electromagnetic waves for our detection.

Wouldn't an easier explanation be that angels exist in more than four dimensions?

If you add an extra spatial dimension (call it "warp"), beings in that dimension could appear and disappear while interfacing with ours just as you or I could appear and disappear in the planar dimension along the wall beside you.

Add another temporal dimension (call it "eternity") and such six dimensional beings could interact with our universe in ways that would appear instantaneous or even simultaneous.

[Cicero]

I guess Christianity or Judaism are too traditional or jejune for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Some of the writers and scientists he cites are worth knowing, but this passage strikes me as psychobabble. Too much LSD and Berkeley-style Buddhist dabbling (which is quite a different thing from classical Buddhist writings).

[MHGinTN]

Using your better way of expressing this phenomenon, I would offer that the temporal dimension perhaps has three variables just as the spatial has three. Our sensing may be limited to one (or at most two) of the variables, while Angels may possess existence in three. I like the way you express it better than the tortured way I tried to express this notion to Physicist. [Would it make sense to pose the temporal dimension as past, present, and future for the variables?... analogous to past=linear, present=planar, future=volumetric.]

[cornelis]

Science and math can only discover what is

Hank, man, get a hold of yourself. Who led you to confuse knowing with existence? Where have you been in all these threads? Only a crackpot pseudo-intellectual posing as a philosopher could suggest "existense" identical with "knowing."