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.

[Dec31,1999]

The absolute is unknowable from knowledge of the relative field alone. It is only by transcending the gross level of existence that one can know it. It's a paradox.

[beavus]

I am opposed to all forms of superstition.

Superstition is a part of the human condition. It is the source of much inspiration and entertainment from Homer to Stephen King.

[Dec31,1999]

A desire is not an insticnt. An instinct is an automatic pattern of behavior that produces the exactly appropriate behavior for the survival of the animal.

Which is what humans do.

Humans must learn and choose all their behavior. If we had an "instinct" for sex, we would not have to teach our children how to do it, we would not have to decide whether to use bith control or not, and there would be no such thing as "sex education" (as absurd as that is) in the schools.

Humans don't have to be taught "how to do it".

Man does not have instincts. He is a rational/volitional creature, and cannot escape the necessity to choose his behavior, or the responsibility of choosing correctly or suffering the consequences.

An obvious battle at best!

Hank, you post great stuff, but I disagree with this one.

[Virginia-American]

Man does not have instincts.

Isn't infant suckling considered an instinct?

[cornelis]

disposed to Marxism. . .

. . . as we all are to its ubiquitous fog. The label can mislead, I know, and so perhaps this particular attitude to the past can even be described as American. (Labels are bad, says Lovejoy) But in the line from Hegel to Fukuyama (or Kuhn or Feyerabend) there is a common trait in the form of a disposition toward toward history. Desparing of insufficiency rather than yielding to a frank acknowledgment combined with the illusion of objectivity has resulted in a nebulous sublimation (hardly a respect) of the past through a dominance of the present. This is also found in Rawls, and even in Aristotle if you will, who claimed we had no obligation to our forebears.

[MHGinTN]

There is one thing humans do seem to do on instinct that has no manifestation in the rest of the animal kingdom: humans appear to have an instinctual wonder about a creator, perhaps due to their 'self-awareness' and the reflexive response to 'why' as it eventually rears its head during development. Or, perhaps, that reflex is caused by the presence of a spiritual quality not found in the rest of the animal kingdom. I suppose it begs the chicken and egg argument though.

[Dec31,1999]

I would think that the Lord has given us the gift of discernment, but not necessarily the gift of departure from instinct; hence, the struggle.

[beavus]

But the scientist is hardly immune from dogma.

Dogma is a human product. However, the principles of science always demand falsifiability for knowledge of the external world and consistency for everything. Nothing is immune from rational debate.

[cornelis]

Good grief beavus. You were better with donh. What is the most important thing you want to discuss?

[LogicWings]

As for his use of the term "problem" in connection with "love, beauty etc," clearly he is being ironic. He's poking fun at the absurdity of it, and quite rightly suggesting that the mystery of evil in a universe created by a beneficent God is no more mysterious than the existence of "love, beauty, fun etc" in a pointless universe which popped unbidden out of the void.

Yes on both counts. I've heard both sides claim 'the problem of evil' as alleged proof of their side. I have also had rather detailed discussions about what truth, beauty and goodness could mean, or where they could come from if not from 'spiritual' sources. This is basically the same thing he is saying here. I was being somewhat serious and somewhat facetious at the same time. That'll teach me!

I get tired of this 'it must be spiritual' argument. Give some evidence of something 'spiritual' before it is claimed that some such as 'beauty' must derive from it, not the other way around.

[Hank Kerchief]

"I don't know" is actually where reason begins. To suggest otherwise, or begin elsewhere, is presumption.

This is not a criticism of reason, it's part of the explanation of the process. We reason from not knowing to knowing: from agnosis to gnosis.

This is a mistake introduced to philosophy by René Descartes. One must already have knowledge to understand what doubt is. His is a wonderful example of the logical fallacy identified by Ayn Rand called the "stolen concept."

One does not have to understand the process of reason before one begins to use it. The process of reason itself must be used to gain that understanding. Doubt cannot possibly be the beginning of reason. Along reasoning process is required to reach an understanding of what doubt is. All reasoning must begin with those simplest concept one forms at the beginning of conceptualization, that is, the identification of the first percepts we have.

I said: All that matters is what you can see and what you can know. There is nothing else.

You said: This is a postulate which, by definition, can't be borne out by observation.

Whether or not there is anything beyond what we can perceive is unknown. Therefore, the question of whether anything beyond our perception might matter, is also unknown.

You have taken the informal statement I made and called it a postulate. It was much more rhetorical than that. By see, I meant all that one can be directly conscious of, including all conscious introspection. But I included also, "all that we can know." You seem to have ignored that and emphasize only what can be perceived. Perception is self can be known, but it cannot be perceived. We know it because we do it. In fact no aspect of consciousness can be directly perceived, and we can only know those things by introspection. I certianly haven't denied anything beyond the directly perceiveable.

However, it is no postulate, but undeniably true, that what you cannot perceive in any way whatsovever, or know in any way whatsoever, cannot possibly ever matter.

Your #41: Without reason it is not possible to know anything.
Another postulate? Is the knowledge of it self-evident? Or have you arrived at it by reason?
If you gleaned it by reason, you are saying: "I know that there is no knowledge without reason, because reason tells me so."
That would leave you with a tautology.
Or is it self-evident?

For brevities sake, I will say it is a tautology. But you use the word tautology the way Bertand Russell did, as though it were an idictment of the truth it expresses. A tautology is a tautology because what it expresses is true. Some have impuned the idea that 2+2=4 is not really knowledge because it is tautological. But for those whose ability in math consisted of being able to count, "1,2,3,many," the discovery of 2+2=4 was a revolution in their learning. It was not an "empty tautology," but an expression of a truth that otherwise could not have been grasped.

Yes, it is definitely a tautology.

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

You said: Again, how do you know? Is the knowledge that "nothing is self-evident" itself self-evident, or arrived at through reason?

My statement was not an arguement. Everyone knows this. It is true by definition. Percepts are the involuntary consciousness of everything we perceive. Knowledge consists of all those concepts, beginning with the simple concepts by which we idenify percepts, and progressing to the most complex abstractions we make from those simple concepts, such as those of which our sciences, arts, and philosphy consist.

Since only percepts are self-evident (you are aware of them without thinking), and percepts are not knowledge, and, since knowledge consists of concepts, which require reason (thinking) to form, no knowledge is self-evident.

I said: What one gets without reason, that is, using anything but the raional faculty, is the irrational, or superstition. Superstion is not knowledge.

You said: This statement, and the atheism it requires, were arrived at without reason. By your definition, they are superstition.

This is an amazing statement. Have you decided that the only way one can know or believe in God is to be irrational. Do you automatically discount all those who believe God can be known rationally and without superstition. Well, I guess God made a big mistake when He said, "Come now, and let us reason together...." (Isaiah 1:18).

By the way, have you noticed that throughout all of your comments that you have used reason to refute or question my views. If there is something better than reason for reaching the truth, why didn't you use that?

Hank

[Hank Kerchief]

The absolute is unknowable from knowledge of the relative field alone. It is only by transcending the gross level of existence that one can know it. It's a paradox.

The word "paradox" means two things that are true and contradictory, which means two things that are true but each makes the other untrue.

In any case where one believes they have discovered a paradox, what they have discovered is a mental breakdown. Contradictions are always indications of error.

Hank

[beavus]

An so with atheists, on the basis of what isn't.

Yes, it would seem an atheist's openmindedness is limited.

[Hank Kerchief]

Superstition is a part of the human condition. It is the source of much inspiration and entertainment from Homer to Stephen King.

What are you doing? Didn't you know it is bad luck to talk about Stephen King on the 7th of December!

(I didn't mean that kind of superstition, Buthead.)

Hank

[beavus]

If we had an "instinct" for sex, we would not have to teach our children how to do it

Sorry Hank. I think sex predates sex education.

[beavus]

What is the most important thing you want to discuss?

I don't know what you mean.

BTW, I'm sorry you followed the "dialog" with donh. I hope it wasn't as painful for you as it was for me.

[beavus]

Uhhh sorry bout that...yeah heh-heh heh heh heh-heh.

[Hank Kerchief]

Isn't infant suckling considered an instinct?

No, it is a reflex. Notice that a baby will suck on anything that is placed in it's mouth.

An instinct is much more than a simple physical reaction to a stimulus. Even as adults, humans have these, such as the "flinch" reflex when someone fakes a punch.

Instinct, in those creatures that have them, are complete patterns of behavior that automatically provide the animal with the appropriate behavior for meeting the requirements of their nature. Some people have asked, well, humans have an instinct to eat, don't they?

What humans have is a sensation of hunger, which we know is a desire for food. But, a desire for food, does not tell us what is good for us to eat or how to acquire it, or, how to prepare it. Humans must learn all these things, and then choose to do them.

Animals automatically seek and eat what is appropriate to them. They do not need to learn how to acquire their food or what they need to acquire. That is instinct.

Hank

[Hank Kerchief]

Hank, I disagree with this one.

Good!

I think a lot of people misunderstand the difference between desire and instinct. Humans have a desire for food, but that desire does not tell them what is good to eat or how to acquire it. They must learn that, and then decide what to eat.

Humans have sexual desires, but how they will gratify that desire has to be learned. Like many other things, I do not believe it has to be learned form others, but, I cannot imagine that anyone does not know that one learns how to satisfy those desires, and what is appropriate and what is not, for each individual.

No animal has to learn anything about sex. No man can enjoy sex without learning. The desire alone does not provide the information necessary.

Maybe some people do automatically know what to do in sex, but that certainly was not my experience. In fact, one of the most pleasureable experiences of sex is the learning. If I was deprived of an instinct in this matter that others have, I am thankful for it.

Hank

[LogicWings]

But the scientist is hardly immune from dogma. No?

True. Contemporary scientists are filled with dogma. A real scientist is concerned with the process, not the conclusion. When anybody gets too wedded to a conclusion, it becomes dogma. How many paradigm shifts do we have go through before we stop chiseling these things in stone?

This is why I don't think it's all an empty bag here. Mr. Horgan's tack on acknowledging insufficiency is a tradition worthy of both left and right, moralist and scientist.

But he won't admit to anything either. At least it seemed to me. He kept returning to one of the oldest and most classic questions of all, 'Why is there anything?' But he didn't want to venture an answer, so what was left? Is he just asserting the classic 'agnostic' view. Then why doesn't he just say so? (and is this what you mean by 'insufficiency?)

The question of the 'infinite' is all important here. He seemed to take if for granted. Can one truly? And if the 'infinite' truly 'exists,' then who can say what cannot?