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.

[cornelis]

The most fruitful work in the contemporary direction of seeing red roses will be the active fancy [ability] against language. Its method will grow out of biology and psychology through poetic use of language itself. Its achievement will be marked by a reduction of language to nature.

[cornelis]

the contemporary direction of seeing red green roses.

Sorry, that's a very bad typo : ) but not without irony.

[beckett]

BB, thanks for your contributions. Your fertile mind always provides delectable food for thought.

[js1138]

What seems to be going begging these days, however, is folks to fill the role of “champion” for the “software” side. If I might put it that way.

I'm afraid that the more we learn about the hardware of the brain, the more it looks like software. I am particulary concerned by the digital computer metaphore being applied to the brain. This has been the standard model as long as I've been alive (and that's a pretty long time. I first read a discussion of the 12 billion vacuum tubes(!) necessary to emulate the brain back in 1957)

I would bet my life that this is a dead end street. It has led to endless and futile discussions of where the software is and where the memory is. The best we can say is that the software and memory are embodied in the interconnections of neurons -- a far more complex kind of computing than anything ever realized in electronics.

I would have to argue that until we can understand what we can see, we should refrain from inventing things and processes that we can't see. In short, we should not put dragons on the map in places we haven't explored.

[Alamo-Girl]

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

But we are talking about the ability to see things that aren't there. This "ability" can be quite effectual--even successful by certain standards--because that "ability" has consequences that are actually preferred. That "ability" is not nothing.

I certainly agree with your statements and the example given. Art, architecture, science and more - see things that are not there... yet.

I would also add, that the effort to envision can effect outcome - for good or ill. We can become physically ill by dark imaginings or conversely, rise above our circumstance by the power of positive thinking.

Of course, fancy substituted for reality could look like Columbine.

For as he thinketh in his heart, so [is] he... - Proverbs 23:7

[cornelis]

We can become physically ill by dark imaginings

Yes, very important is the distinction between fancy and imagination (illustrated by the excerpt about Joyce above). That disctinction is not always kept, or even held with the same words. I am aware that Voegelin uses the term "imaginative oblivion." which is that particular skill to dream away which has been there all along. js1138 mentions the ability to "refrain from inventing things and processes that we can't see"; the other skill is the ability to deny existence to things we cannot see. That is a mistake that perhaps Kant could have disabused us of, but didn't.

Thank you for your response, A-G.

[js1138]

One of the reasons I am a skeptic is I have seen something that wasn't there, in a wide awake, fully conscious, undrugged state.

I once had a very high quality tape recorder of the type used by movie-makers for on-location recording. I was testing it by recording ambient noise in my Army barracks. While recording, someone walked up the stairs and entered the room.

Months later I was looking for a music tape and accidently put this test recording on. While wearing headphones of the type that cancel out all outside noise, I heard this person walk up the stairs and enter the room. For a couple of seconds I saw and heard this person in full detail and motion. It was absolutely convincing.

There are similar stories of people "playing back" events during brain surgery.

This phenomenon has been known for decades, but is still not understood. I assume, however, that it has a physical basis.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your always engaging analysis!

I suspect there are a lot of lurkers following this discussion, who might greatly appreciate a short definition of terms and bio of philosophers. Do you have something handy you could share?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing your experience! That must have been unsettling.

There have also been a number of instances in near death experiences where the survivor can recount events which occurred while the brain was dead, from perspectives other than where his own body was at the time.

Of course, in an entirely materialistic epistemology these are explained away as biochemical phenomenon combined with wishful thinking. That however does not constitute a good hypothesis because the same phenomenon is experienced by children with NDEs.

On the big thread we exhaustively discussed the difference between materialist and physicalist. Personally, I am very glad we have Roger Penrose and others like him - because it requires an open mind to explore beyond the known body of physical laws. The materialist cannot "go there" because in his worldview "the physical realm is all that there is."

[VadeRetro]

One of the reasons I am a skeptic is I have seen something that wasn't there, in a wide awake, fully conscious, undrugged state.

Fascinating. Let me share my own bizarre "seeing what isn't there" experience.

Years ago, at the end of a fairly normal dream, I had a "mini-nightmare" in which a wasp was flying at my face, hovering right before my eyes. Within the dream I of course tried to jerk my head back violently and, as often happens in such cases, I started awake.

I say "awake," because I could see my bedroom with my peripheral vision and was aware that I had just been dreaming. But there's a hitch. In the center of my visual field, a close-up of the dream wasp still hovered, buzzing its wings and twitching its legs. I wouldn't be surprised if the area it subtended corresponds with the visual field of the macular region of the retina.

I sat there like that for a couple of seconds--awake, aware of my surroundings, and watching a dream wasp in the middle of my field of vision--until the illusion broke up and was replaced with the expected normal view of the room.

I was calmly expecting this to happen before it did. I guess I realized that I didn't figure to be stuck looking at dream input in the middle of my visual field all day. (Now that would be something to call in sick with.)

[js1138]

Of course, in an entirely materialistic epistemology these are explained away as biochemical phenomenon combined with wishful thinking.

That is precisely where we part ways. I would prefer to stretch the concepts of materialistic and biochemical. We have encountered no brick walls in researching the physical aspects of the mind, even though the problems are enormously difficult. So why insert dragons on the unexplored portions of the map?

[cornelis]

js1138 mentions the ability to "refrain from inventing things and processes that we can't see"; the other skill is the ability to deny existence to things we cannot see

It may be that the recognition involved in the first is not as habitual as the recognition of the second, at least nowadays. However, habits can be beneficial when they are good.

Our experience of illusion also has a follow-up: that after recognizing "it was just a dream" we pretend to have seen all. The wise man who refrains from that error is typically depicted--you guessed it--as blind.

[js1138]

In my old age and decrepitude I have more interesting dreams. The late morning ones often have a mixed character in which I am aware of the fact that I am dreaming and can attempt to steer the dream. Unfortunately this generally fails, but I can remember a lot of vivid details.

I remain curious why people attach reality to phenomena which can be conjured up by physical and chemical manipulation of the brain. This approach closes off curiosity and avenues of research.

[js1138]

I am curious about the "existence to things we cannot see". There are vast areas of things we cannot see, but that does not make them non-physical or exclude them from study. I am asking, why project daemons into the unknown, when the path to explore is wide open?

[beckett]

I want to say that #273 is quite beautiful

I am an longtime fan of Leonard Cohen. In fact, sometimes when I'm asked what I do for a living I say I'm a Bird on a Wire.

Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way
To be free

Like a fish on a hook
Like a knight from an old-fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons
For thee

If I have been unkind
I hope that you will just let it go by
And if I have been untrue
I hope you know
It was never to you

Like a baby stillborn
Like a beast with its horn
I have torn everyone who reached out to me
But I swear by this song
By all I have done wrong
I'll make it all up to you

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
He called out to me, "Don't ask for so much."
And a young man leaning on his darkened door
He cried out to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"

Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried, in my way, to be free.

On those occasions when I am not a bird on a wire, I am, you guessed it, a drunk in a midnight choir.

[cornelis]

why project daemons into the unknown, when the path to explore is wide open?

Projection, (which, I think, is jargon particular to educational psychology) is then again this ability of ours to fancy or imagine, for good or ill (although I suspect that projection, nowadays, is supposed to be bad). OTH, the unknown is not particular to the one or the other. It applies to both. And so the path of exploration always deals with the unknown. Our recognition from this is that the human mind sees very little. Why is this important? Our limited knowledge always suspends what we do see, projected or not.

[VadeRetro]

In my old age and decrepitude I have more interesting dreams. The late morning ones often have a mixed character in which I am aware of the fact that I am dreaming and can attempt to steer the dream. Unfortunately this generally fails, but I can remember a lot of vivid details.

I can often remember my dreams as well, but they tend to be frustratingly incoherent meanders in which huge jumps of setting and cast go unnoticed at the time. It appears that elements from my grab-bag of memories are being mixed almost randomly. Sometimes there's a "theme." A common one is frustration. I just remembered that I have to get somewhere, but I can't get going. Or I'm looking for something--my car in many cases--and of course can't find it. Others are anxiety and regret over past choices.

I've also often realized at the time that I'm dreaming. That's not the normal case, although there's so little continuity of narrative, space, or time in my dreams that when I wake up I'm usually amazed that my dream character didn't spot it.

[cornelis]

Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried, in my way, to be free.

I have torn everyone who reached out to me

Very moving and apropos.

[VadeRetro]

Joyce was perhaps a better imager of things that were not there than he was a writer. I'll admit to taking the word of others about his work rather than tackling him personally.

[Alamo-Girl]

Fascinating, Vade! Thank you for sharing your dream experience!