Science is the best guide to spirituality

Some people believe that science is opposed to spirituality, that these pursuits operate in different realms of reality and an embrace of one implies a distancing from the other.

I've never believed this.

Even when I was in my most religious frame of mind, the 35 years I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru considered to be God in Human Form, I remained intensely interested in what science has learned about our universe even as I explored the possibility of realms beyond the physical.

This is why the first book that I wrote on behalf of RSSB, God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder, was a study of how the new physics could be related to ancient mysticism. I deeply enjoyed reading a lot of science books, particularly regarding quantum theory, as that was a scientific area I was pretty much ignorant about.

It seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, that reality is a unified whole, not a mess of disjointed pieces. So whatever is true and real in the domain of science should be reflected in whatever is true and real in the domain of spirituality.

Of course, there are unproven conjectures in both science and spirituality, albeit more so in the latter than in the former, given the emphasis on backing up hypotheses with solid evidence in science. And one reason I like science so much is that even well-proven hypotheses are never taken to be 100% true, since there's always a possibility of them being proven wrong, or at least needing to be modified.

Still, it seems that two propositions occupy an intermediate position between raw conjecture and well-cooked fact in both science and spirituality, at least certain areas of spirituality such as Buddhism and Advaita. Meaning, there's both considerable debate about the propositions and considerable evidence in support of them.

They are: (1) We humans lack a self that is unchanging and immaterial, and (2) We humans lack free will, being bound by deterministic forces. In other words, we don't have a soul that survives our bodily death and we don't have the ability to avoid lawful causes and effects.

This puts us in the same position as everything else in the universe, so far as we know.

Every living thing dies. Every living and inanimate thing obeys the laws of nature. By not viewing ourselves as special in this vast, majestic universe, both science and some forms of spirituality (again, notably Buddhism) present us with an appealing view where humans are closely connected, inseparable really, with everything else. 

What I find beautiful about this viewpoint is how learning what is true about ourselves leads to learning what is true about the universe, and vice versa -- learning what is true about the universe leads to learning what is true about ourselves. 

Not all truths, obviously, but the two important ones I've mentioned: no self, no free will. This makes scientific reality a friend of spirituality, not a foe. I can bounce back and forth between books about neuroscience and Buddhism without worrying that one will contradict the other (at least, not by much).

These days science denialism is on the upswing among certain groups. In the United States, religious fundamentalists and extreme political conservatives are the worst offenders against scientific truth. They also tend to believe in a supernatural soul and God-given free will. 

Hopefully one day not only Americans, but people all around the world, will understand that learning what is true about ourselves and the world isn't to be feared, but to be embraced. Mysteries always will remain in both science and spirituality.

But we should lean into the darkness of mystery from the well-lighted solid foundation of what is currently known about reality, not the shaky ground of unproven belief.

Comments

[um]

For science to be able to do its job, reality has to be brought to a calculable and measurable STANDSTILL ...or ...DEATH ... by restriction, reduction, exclusion etc of data....scientist are restricted by the very tools they use both in developing an theory and hypotheses as in any experiment to validate.

That seems to be the very opposite from what Zazen is all about ... experiencing the here and now without any man made mental restrictions.

I wonder if there is anything in the world that is needed to meditate, or to use the words of Kodo Sawaki, ...to settle your bottom onto your cushion and having the privilege to practice Zazen

AND ....AND...

He, kodo sawaki, goes on to say ..that Zazen is absolutely good for NOTHING
That too
Is the very opposite of the scientific endeavor.

For those that believe have real faith and trust in an spiritual narrative, a spiritual way of life there is no need for anything from science
and
For those that practice science there is no need to have any spiritual interest.

Only those that want to promote something that does not speak for itself often use references to science ...just read some advertisements to see what I mean.

[Ron E.]

Questions of God, the self, free will, mankind’s specialness, interconnectedness are all topics that some Buddhist thinking and non-duality broadly agree with regard today’s science (and vice-versa). Mostly, the above topics are available to perception in that, for example, no such thing as a separate self which has free will can be found – and we all have the ability to look and see for ourselves that this is so.

Sadly, they (Zen and science) also arouse many non-science beliefs which I put down to mankind’s fears and insecurities along with believing that we are somehow special and superior to the rest of the natural world. As our chemical brains can produce and throw up a variety of weird and wonderful experiences, we become subject to allocating them to metaphysical interpretations furthering the myth of our specialness.

Together with some Buddhist thinking and some of the non-duality teachings, it is enlightening to read alongside these some of the latest books on research which often concur with the findings of Buddhist teachings. For instance: -
‘Being You’ by Anil Seth: who among other things, explores consciousness.
‘Loosing Ourselves’ by Jay Garfield: who argues the benefits of living without a self.
‘What is Life’ by Paul Nurse: A geneticist who talks of life as information.
‘We are our Brains’ by Dick Swabb: A neurobiologist outlines how everything we do and not do is determined by our brains.

All good and informative books; along of course with many others and often very complimentary to Buddhism, particularly to Zen/Chan Buddhism.

[Donald]

We're all God in human form unless you're an animal then you'd be God in animal form!

[Appreciative Reader]

Just read your post. Agree 100% with all of it, obviously.

I'd just like to add something. Something that is obvious, so utterly obvious and so utterly self-evident as to be something of a truism actually, but still probably worth articulating because it doesn't seem to be obvious to some/many.

It's ...absurd, silly to imagine that religion, or "spiritualism", is somehow a separate category, that needs sussing out carefully, as far as whether it falls under the ambit of science. Of *course* it does. Everything does, every matter of factuality.

Like I've argued in the past, twice that I can remember, one time when discussing the scientific worldview with Spence, and another time when discussing ...something, I forget what, with um : If we lived literally in a magic world, a world where if you sat on your glasses then instead of having to go out to get it fixed, all you you'd need to do is raise your wand and say, Oculus Repairo: Even in such a literally magic Hogwarts world, the scientific method is still our best way to answer questions of factuality. Likewise, even literally in a world where women get pregnant spontaneously, and birth babies that grow up to be business magnates that make a killing by setting up whole chains of distilleries as well as hospitals, both powered by nothing more than their magic touch, even in such a literally miracle-laden world, the scientific method is still our best way to answer questions of factuality.

(You, Brian, will agree fully with the above, I know. For those that might not, just think it through, I'm not going to spell it out in more detail again now, I've done it already, in some detai, on at least two occasions here, like I said.)

The words "paranormal", and "supernatural", are meaningless terms. By definition they don't exist.

And nor is this just semantics, not in the least! This isn't a matter of defining away the supernatural, if only people would actually think this through.

Should "spiritual" claims actually be true, even in that hypothetical scenario, it is still the scientific method that is best equipped to answer questions of factuality. Of course, that needs an open mind. But again, if I may use again that quote from Sagan that I've used here more than once: paraphrased: Good to keep an open mind, absolutely, but not so open that your brains fall out. ...Or, as you put it, Brian, in the concluding sentence of your post: "(We) should lean into the darkness of mystery from the well-lighted solid foundation of what is currently known about reality, not the shaky ground of unproven belief."