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.

[beavus]

Is there a survival instinct in humans?

I will say that my experience with humans is that they will usually go to whatever lengths they can to ensure their survival. If you define "instinct" as an impulse then I suppose this could be called a "survival instinct". I don't have any reason think there is any preprogrammed complex behavior associated with.

At times it fails in place of a person's desire to avoid suffering (the suicidal), or to preserve a greater value (self-sacrifice).

[beavus]

What is 'spirit?'

Incorporeal consciousness.

[Phaedrus]

If you're saying that Horgan shows a less than conservative respect for yesterday's rungs on the "ladder" of tradition, I acknowledge the accuracy of the interpretation ...

I read this as Horgan saying that knowing is a path to being, becomes being, if the "right" path is chosen, and that the perspective from knowing/being is sufficient to obviate the need to dwell on the path. I agree insofar as knowing must move beyond words and I also agree insofar as each path is individual. His "trash" observations say to me that no matter how seemingly superior is any new or greater human perspective, that perspective opens up or makes known new paths toward even more encompassing perspectives. I do think we rely too heavily on the thought of those who have gone before, acknowledging that that gold should be mined -- we should just not stop there. Then again, maybe this "redneck intellectual" had too much dessert after dinner last night ... ;-}

[Phaedrus]

Truly, I hope uprisings will keep this from being costly not just in Iraq but Iran, N. Korea, Syria, Palestine and anywhere terrorism has found a sponsor.

Reading now The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq by Kenneth M. Pollack. From this reading, I conclude that Saddam's first priority is and has always been his personal security. Toward this end he devotes massive resources. The liklihoods seem quite low that his overthrow can be accomplished by an uprising of the Kurds or the Shi'ah in the south, or by coup or assassination.

In the U.N. Security Council, Russia, France and China, for various reasons, all oppose Saddam's overthrow by the U.S. military and they will use the appointment of U.N. inspectors and delaying tactics to prevent it.

Containment has fallen apart and deterrance won't work if he develops a nuclear capability, which he will with time.

The Arab nations in the area, on the other hand, would not oppose the U.S. or U.N. taking him down militarily IF such action were quick, decisive, overwhelming. They will not support continued sanctions, which have lost their teeth in any case.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your post!

The Arab nations in the area, on the other hand, would not oppose the U.S. or U.N. taking him down militarily IF such action were quick, decisive, overwhelming.

Absolutely! That is how it must be.

[Alamo-Girl]

What is 'spirit?' Can we define this term?

I doubt that I can "define" this term to anyone else's satisfaction - but I can describe for you what I know to be true from my personal experience.

My spirit is who I am. It exists apart from, but is associated with, my body. It is not bound by the laws of physics, e.g. it exists outside of space and time. In between the two is my soul, which is my ego, my mind, sense of humor, etc.

When I'm in intense worship, my soul is quieted and my spirit seems "disconnected" from my body, rapturous and free.

[MHGinTN]

Finally, we begin to get back at the reason for the seeming divide between Science and Spirituality ... incorporeal consciousness! Because it is incorporeal, it is extremely hard to reconcile with science which has yet to find a way to measure that which seems non-physical, non-verifiable. I don't think that situation will exist for much longer as physicists uncover more of the complex way dimensional realities (spacetime systems expressing energy quanta for measuring) are interwoven. [Sabertooth's observation of possible spatial variables as yet undiscovered may yield to Kaku's string theory, or something along those lines, and the concept of a mirroring universe --brane theory-- may yet yield understandiing to the way the universe (so far beyond our sensing) functions.

Behavior is currently under investigation through the electromagnetic functions of the brain and the senses, as approached by first identifying the chemical messengers and molecules with which our physical body connects our understanding of the universe around us. The DNA molecule, in its amazing complexity, somehow builds a human being from fundamental physical parts, but human consciousness, because of the non-corporeal aspect, is not limited to the molecular level that we can presently measure. We will get beyond this, perhaps with the next breakthrough in quantum mechanical understanding. Thank you beavus for returning to the essence of this thread.

I don't have any reason (to) think there is any preprogrammed complex behavior associated with (humans). beavus ... that is the key to instinct versus complex consciousness, isn't it? In the animal kingdom leading up to humankind, complex behavioral activity can be programmed in, somehow, with the molecular complexities. But with humans, there appears to be a level of interaction with the universe that is not falsifiable according to current methodology ... we haven't figure out what human consciousness is versus other animal consciousness, thus we have yet to devise ways to quantify and experiment on such a complexity.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the heads up to your post!

I don't have any useful contribution to this discussion, because, to me, the existence of spirit is axiomatic to those who sense it - and unbelievable to those who don't.

I doubt that the laws of physics could apply to the spirit, much like they do not apply within a black hole or in a theoretical alternate universe. Metaphysics lies beyond the ability to apprehend theory.

[cornelis]

Metaphysics lies beyond the ability to apprehend theory.

I tried to figure out what you meant. Can you remove the personification from this to say it again?

[MHGinTN]

Metaphysics will, if we approach the problem correctly, yield to scientific understanding, perhaps. Beyond physics doesn't necessarily mean 'forever'.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post! Here's my attempt to reword:

When a theory is beyond our ability to grasp it solely by empirical means - it becomes the work of Metaphysics (Definition of Metaphysics)

[Alamo-Girl]

Beyond physics doesn't necessarily mean 'forever'.

I agree. When science throws up its collective hands, metaphysics takes over - but that does not mean it necessarily must end there.

[taxed2death]

You've raised an excellent point. You cat is conscious. Some would argue it is not (maybe me....I'll have to mull on that for awhile) because by many peoples definition, consciousness implies a realization of "self".

The "thinker of the thought", if you will.

The book I mentioned near the top of this post delves deeply into this matter in a much more scientific way than say...Depak Chopra has in the past. This is why I find it such a facinating read....much more into the "nuts and bolts" of consciousness and MUCH less esoteric.

[cornelis]

When a theory is beyond our ability to grasp it

This is where i get hung up. A theory, is a means to grasp "it." If a theory is beyond our ability, whose ability promoted the theory?

[MHGinTN]

I've often wonder: on the cellular level, isn't it the molecular direction of DNA that directs the cells to act in concert for organ function?... isn't it 'molecular instinct' that directs organs and thus organs support the organism?... isn't that the case with all living things?... and as animals evolved, behavioral instincts for the organism began to manifest? Is that trend so incorrect to be applied to the advent of the spiritual parameters of the human organism and how that aspect of the human animal raises us above the rest of life on earth?

[cornelis]

When science throws up its collective hands, metaphysics takes over

I'm sorry to be such a bother, but metaphysics is operative whether science throws up its collective hands or not. No science is possible without a metaphysics. That's in Aristotle too.

[MHGinTN]

And that is kind of along my point, a metaphysical theory is beyond our ability to falsify it with experimentation, but that doesn't preclude eventually being able to with a different approach to the problems theorized.

[taxed2death]

It's tough to define.

MY OWN definition of spirituality, that applies ONLY for me I suppose.....is the realization that I am not a central figure in the machinery of the universe, just a cog in the wheel.
This concept involves shovelling a truckload of humility down ones throat on a daily basis.

I consider my self a spiritual person and more-so each day as I gain more knowledge of the "human condition".

I see spirituality in MANY old(er) people.

Some call it "wisdom".

As I mentioned before, I was raised a Christian. To me, although I may not attend church every Sunday, being Christian is an aknowledgement of the desire to be Christ-like in my words and actions.

Believe me! It's NOT EASY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since I've always had a facination with physics, anything I can read that makes me feel like I'm a piece to the cosmic puzzle is comforting.

Quantum physics is amazing....the fact that there is more space BETWEEN the molecules of my human body than there are molecules that make up my human body causes the fatal "blue screen of death" to occur on my bio-electrical-mechanical hard drive ;)

The fact that the molecules in my body cannot ever truly be destroyed, means that in one form, I have "immortality".

My body is the stuff that stars are made of etc.

Again this is my interpetation and is subject to harsh critisizm from any and all.

[taxed2death]

"I doubt that the laws of physics could apply to the spirit"

See my post #8.

That book will help you along your way :)

[taxed2death]

Interesting.....I guess it's an absolute truth when people say "it's all in the timing"

When, specifically do we reach consiousness, or a feeling of "self"