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.

[Cvengr]

If one had read Scripture many times, the restatement that fallen angels also have been known to heal would not come as any surprise or derision.

Perhaps the real key is simply to first accept Him, confess your sins in repentance, to the Father in the name (by faith and belief in His Perfect Sacrifice) of the Son, in order to be filled by the Holy Spirit who will guide you in your metaboolizing of Scripture.

Reading Scripture is the first step, after returning to fellowship with God on His grounds. After reading, comprehending and spiritually digesting the Word, it must be understood and made into an outward knowledge, or epignosis, for it to be believed,...in faith.

When a statement is made that certain extrabiblical writings are more interesting, this is an indicator that the reader is reading in their own will external or independent of God's will. Those things spiritually discerned, will merely appear foolish. Instead the reader will tend to seek to comprehend or imagine spectacular situations which merely titillate the senses or reinforce an arrogance complex of scarred soul.

The Nag Hamadi scripts pale in comparison to the depth and robust intricacies of Scripture already recognized as the canon of Scripture. By no means do I discount them as grossly untrue at present, simply because I haven't rigorously studied them, but because merely a few references in them fail to acknowledge the rich Word of God acknowledging and honoring the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, I find it much more fruitful to place the Holy Bible, or Scripture, in higher priority for study and a steady walk in faith.

[Cvengr]

It seems as though you have devoted much more attention to mysticism and occultic knowledge than the Gospel or good news. Isn't it also titillating to realize that God's Word may shine on all without being hidden to allow all man to have a relationship with Him and inherit His blessings? Gnostic tendancies to attribute creation from belief at the will of man fails to address the issue,...properly. The real issue is how to remain faithful to Him, understanding His Word and placing it into reason in the soul and in rest allowing the Holy Spirit to metabolize that doctrine into an acting, walk of belief manifest outside oneself in love.

[Cvengr]

..."It isn't enough to have to believe in God, we have to believe in all this too!"

The meaning of 'to believe in' as read in English translations of Scripture isn't conveyed in the above query, but another meaning appears to be confused and substituted with different tenses in the vocabulary.

When we believe in Him, we are able to receive salvation. This belief is not merely an acknowledgment of His existence. That meaning might be in the Greek word 'gnosis'. The faith in God and acceptance of His plan is made possible by the sacrificial unlimited atonement for all men of sin which caused a spiritual separation from God and physical separation of body frm soul and spirit.

The Holy Spirit indwells the believer and allows us to mature in Him, by first learning doctrine from the Word and then metabolizing that doctrine into a walk with Him, or an epignosis,...an outward knowledge, which is the belief in Him.

The understanding or gnosis of fallen angels is provided from studying Scripture and the doctrine metabolized regarding the angelic conflict, good and evil, creation and sin, provides one a further walk in Him to understand and discern the actions of deceiving persons, man and angelic.

[stuartcr]

Couldn't have said it better.

[Cvengr]

"Then how can 'you' ever know when a healing is from God or is from a "fallen angel?"

By discerning deceiving spirits. In order to properly discern, one must first accept God on His terms, through Christ. This then allows an indwelling of the Holy Spirit. After being indwelt, is one sins, they fall out of fellowship with God. In order to return into fellowship, they must repent and confess that/those sins to the Father via Christ. This may be done today simply by prayer, in part as belief.

In this fashion the Holy Spirit is allowed to fill the believer again. From there, the believer conitinues to study the Word and understand doctrine and metabolize it further under the lead of the Holy Spirit. As one continues to mature, they are better able to discern spiritual things.

BTW, in many cases, deceiving spirits exhibit remarkably emotional and extreme variations of unholy personal behavior. They frequently aren't that hidden even though they believe they are going to control all events.

Why can't you be fooled as well as anybody else? Because only what you believe is true?

The Word of God is true. Not because of me or any other created person, but because it is the Word of God. Once one accepts and believes that Word after comprehending it and acting on that understanding and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide the spirit, one can discern properly.

Is it possible to be decieved? Of course, if one fails to walk in Him or insufficiently study the Word of God, one might easily be tempted to act independent of God's will and fall to temptation and be deceived. Good guidance is, Return to Him so He may return to you.

[stuartcr]

Leonard Cohen 1968,"Suzanne"

[LogicWings]

It seems as though you have devoted much more attention to mysticism and occultic knowledge than the Gospel or good news.

As I have noted elsewhere, one of my mottos is, leave no stone unturned.

Do you know who Dr.Walter Martin is?

[LogicWings]

Is it possible to be decieved? Of course, if one fails to walk in Him or insufficiently study the Word of God, one might easily be tempted to act independent of God's will and fall to temptation and be deceived. Good guidance is, Return to Him so He may return to you.

And this is just the point. This is the same claim made by all, which is why I am ending this conversation. Doesn't matter whether it is Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, David Koresh, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, on and on and on, I have heard this exact same argument used to prove "We Have the Truth! - Everybody else is deceived!"

You are backing me into a corner where my only recourse is to start picking apart your belief, Christianity or both. And that is something I do not want to do. I ask questions about how one comes to certain conclusions. But what you are doing to me is preaching, and I'm not interested. I've heard it all before and there isn't anything you can tell me that I haven't heard, and probably from better. No offense intended but go preach to somebody else.

[Cvengr]

Yes, founder of the Christian Research Institute. Author of Kingdom of the Cults. Why do you ask?

[LogicWings]

Yes, founder of the Christian Research Institute. Author of Kingdom of the Cults. Why do you ask?

He was the modern eras greatest Christian Apologist and I have listened to what must be hundreds of hours of his lectures on tape. When you implied that I have put more attention into mysticism and the occult you couldn't be more wrong. I find that I have put more study into Christianity, and the roots of the religion, than many Christians have. He was also a superb logician and one of the people responsible for my understanding and devotion to it. But he was at least honest enough to say, 'Faith is just faith, take it or leave it' and not try to prove it logically.

[beckett]

Thanks for your reply.

My use of the term "insane" was meant less for its technical accuracy than for its satisfaction of the rhetorical requirements of the paragraph. I wanted to tie your use of the word to the paltry state of our overall knowledge despite considerable successes through "sane," rational inquiry. My point was not that it's commendable to be literally "insane," but that rational inquiry has its limits which throughout the human saga have led people to draw conclusions about existence that are not strictly rational.

BB (and Plato's) metaxy is a metaphor for the tension that exists between the physical and the spiritual, a bridge between the mundane and the ideal.

As for my speculation about "leaks way down," that might be best thought of, I think, as completely consistent with "Mind pervading the whole Universe."

Suzanne is a great tune, and Leonard a great poet and songwriter. He spends longs stretches of time in a Buddhist monastery every year, and it shows in his art.

[keri]

I understand the knot.

After thinking about #253, I will only post this one line from the article with a short comment about it. If you are lucky, your glimpse of the abyss will make this life seem more real, not less.

I wonder if a glimpse of the abyss doesn't do just the opposite and if that isn't a great thing.

[beckett]

By the way, my reference to Cohen comes from Anthem, a wonderful song.

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be
Ah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free

Ring the bells
That still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

We asked for signs
The signs were sent:
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see

I can't run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they've summoned,
They've summoned up
A thundercloud
And they're going
To hear from me

Ring the bells that still can ring...

You can add up the parts
But you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart
To love will come
But like a refugee

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack,
A crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack,
A crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in
That's how the light gets in

The music compliments it beautifully, so it really should be listened to.

[Nogbad]

ping

[Cvengr]

Were those hours of study focused on God and your relationship with Him, or upon potentially deeply hidden meaning?

[tm22721]

an attempt to refute the laws of identity and causality

Remember that there is no causality at the quantum level, only probability.

God plays with dice.

BUMP

[LogicWings]

As is often the case, the more we communicate the less I find we are at odds.

I also find that people who draw conclusions that are not 'strictly rational' weren't all that rational in the first place, so it isn't the fault or 'limits' of 'rationality' but of the thought processes of the people involved. The 'insane' part is when people believe things for which there are no 'reasons' other than their belief. Much of the world is still quite insane. What we don't factor in today is that there are 'insane' philosophies, that if people believe them literally make these people insane. What these people believe is utterly counter to everything we know about reality. There are, right now, people doing rain dances. If they work, the gods heard, if they don't the gods are still angry. There is no where to go with this.

When I was spouting off once there was an English professor of a friend of mine who said to me laughing, "Everything you say is sheer poetry." When I asked him what he meant he said, "You say whatever you want to."

Poetry is words strung together because it sounds beautiful, but that doesn't make them true. I love Paul Simon's Graceland for precisely this reason. It is utterly beautiful but if you actually look at the words it is utter nonsense, there is no meaning.

The leap from 'mind pervades the whole universe' to the subject of 'spirit' leaking into it from way down is a whole other subject. But we can plod on.

[LogicWings]

Were those hours of study focused on God and your relationship with Him, or upon potentially deeply hidden meaning?

This is going to sound flippant and I'm really not being a smart alec, but - both and neither.

I was trying to understand, on many levels. That the Scriptures are written on a level we now don't understand, with many hidden meanings, is clearly true. If one looks at that old Semitic way of writing one quickly understands this. There is an old Sufi poem about a toad that makes absolutely no sense until one understands that the word for 'toad' and the word for 'eternity' are the same word phonetically, even though the are spelled differently. When you understand that the one is a metaphor for the other, the poem becomes this incredible metaphor for life.

The whole of the Scriptures was written when this was the way people wrote, almost exclusively. But we have long ago lost the keys to the metaphors and so people nowadays take the whole thing literally, which it was never meant to be. But listening to someone like Dr. Martin one occasionally can run across a glimmer. I learned things I wouldn't know otherwise.

[Gary Boldwater]

There is causality at the quantum level. The probability is used because all the inputs/variables can't be measured or in some cases the measurement affects the outcome. If you know the exact states of two interacting particles, you will know the outcome exactly.

[LogicWings]

Leonard Cohen 1968,"Suzanne"

one of the prettiest songs ever written.