Excerpts From:
The Chrysalis Age: A Handbook for Spiritual and Global Transformation in the New Millennium
Religion vs. Science vs. Spirituality: A Dialogue
Science: You are simply mythology, nothing more and
nothing less. Stories told in ancient
times for ancient minds.
Religion: Well, by all means, let’s jump right
into the discussion. I prefer to think
that I am the bedrock of civilization.
You, on the other hand, are just a means of knowing and manipulating the
physical world. You can’t offer answers
to the real questions that I address.
Science: I have explained away all the myths you
created to understand the world. I have
explained how the universe was created, how life came to be, how humans arose,
and how they have evolved over time.
Religion: You have
only discovered some of the mechanism for how things happened. You still haven’t explained why? You say the universe began with the Big Bang,
but you can’t tell us why.
Science: In time I’m sure I will figure it out.
Religion: Even if you do, you don’t have anything to
say about life as humans live it.
Science: I think I’ve had a great deal to say through
psychology and sociology.
Religion: Again you’re just watching and making
guesses. You can’t speak from authority.
Science: What possible authority can you speak from?
Religion: I speak with the authority of God.
Science: What God?
Which one? You have so many
religions, so many gods, and so many stories.
They can’t all be right. The
Christian God is not the same as the Hindu gods, or the same as the Zoroastrian
gods. And Buddhism doesn’t even have a creator god.
Religion: Each religion speaks with its own authority.
Science: Then how can your religion be universal? You’re admitting limits to your knowledge.
Spirituality: May I interject?
Science: Not if you’re going to start in with that
stuff about a perennial philosophy and a great chain of being.
Religion: What do you have against those?
Science: First, the
great chain of being is based on faulty logic.
Sure, you have matter giving rise to life and life giving rise to mind,
but you can’t just extrapolate mind giving rise to soul and spirit. You can see matter and life, and you can see
minds, but you can’t see spirit.
Spirituality: Exactly.
Soul is an interior experience.
And Spirit can only be experienced internally as
well.
Science: Then how
can you prove it?
Religion:
You don’t need to prove it.
Spirituality: Well, I disagree with Religion there.
You prove it by experiencing it.
How do you prove that you are dreaming? Or that you have a mind?
Science: With an
EEG of your brain wave patterns.
Spirituality:
And you can get an EEG of your brain when in deep ecstatic meditation.
Science: Which just proves that it’s all in your
head. Just like dreams.
Spirituality: No, it’s all in your head period. The reason I brought up dreams is because
even if you can see that someone is dreaming, you can’t tell what they are
dreaming. You have to rely on them to
describe to you that interior experience.
But you also have to rely on them to describe the way they perceive any
experience. And a change in brain wave
patterns only shows that all experience is interpreted through our minds.
Science: If I see a tree and you see a tree,
we both see a tree.
Spirituality: Yes, but
we both see the tree differently.
Science: But I can
describe the tree in scientific terms with complete accuracy. In terms that are not dependent on internal
experience.
Spirituality: But however you describe it, you have to
interpret it internally. Why is it that
two scientists can look at the same data and reach two totally different
conclusions?
Science: You’re talking about human fallibility.
Religion: That’s the
fallibility of science.
Spirituality:
Fallibility is a good point. Karl Popper
suggested that for a scientific principle to be held as accurate, that it must
continue to be proven “not wrong.” It is
never accepted as gospel, but held in a suspension of fallibility, constantly
checking it against the facts.
Science: Which is something that religion can’t
do. Your facts contradict
themselves. Which proves them wrong.
Religion: You might make me concede that I’m wrong
about how the universe began, or about evolution, but you can’t prove that
there isn’t a God.
Science: And you can’t prove that there is. Fallibility means that your proof must be
consistently positive, and yet you haven’t been able to muster a single
positive proof for the existence of God.
Religion:
I don’t have to prove God. That’s
what faith is about.
Science: I can’t accept faith as a way of engaging the
universe. Fallibility means that I can’t
have faith in anything. It is all
provisional. However accurate my theories
may be, they might change.
Spirituality: But you can see it.
Science: Where?
How?
Spirituality: Internally
through meditation.
Science: Back to the internal.
Spirituality: And back to the perennial philosophy.
Science: How can you have a perennial philosophy when the
religions don’t agree?
Spirituality:
The religions don’t agree, the myths and rules and dogmas, but the
mystics agree on the ultimate nature of reality.
Religion: I’m not sure.
Christian mystics aren’t saying the same thing as Buddhists.
Spirituality:
They are both revealing a different perception of reality obtained
through contemplation and meditation.
And a close study of the world’s mystic traditions shows that they unfold
in deeper and deeper layers, each influenced by social, cultural, personal, and
physical factors.
Science: It doesn’t matter. It’s all in their heads. The meditation changes the structure of their
brains in ways that create the experiences.
Spirituality: The meditation does seem to change their
brains; however, not in ways that create experience, but in ways that change
their perception of experience. The same things happen as we grow from babies
to adults. Our brain changes, and with
it, our perception of the world. Mystics
are doing the same thing.
Science: But it doesn’t prove that there is a God.
Spirituality: It doesn’t prove a creator, a single being or
entity that is all knowing and all-powerful, no.
Science: So, no
God, no religion.
Spirituality: No, you still have religion, you just don’t
have the myths or dogma. Mystics
throughout the ages have been reporting a similar deepening view of reality
through meditation. Ultimately they
reveal a non-dual perception of the universe, of the universe as One, as Spirit, the Ground of All Being, One without a second.
Religion: Which is God.
Spirituality: You can call Spirit as the Ground of all Being, God, but you can’t
personify it, because it is beyond personality.
That’s the whole point of transcending the ego-self. You have to get past your ego-self to see
Spirit as the Ground of All Being.
It wouldn’t make any sense to then find another ego-self written large
over the universe.
Science: But it’s
all in their heads.
Spirituality: Think of it as a giant long running
experiment. Over a period of at least
2500 years people have been meditating and when adjusted for cultural
differences, and for depth of experience, they all seem to be reporting similar
changes in the perception of the nature of reality.
Science: But where’s the control?
Spirituality:
It’s built in. The control is all
the people who haven’t been meditating.
Science: So, I’m just supposed to accept what these
meditators say?
Spirituality: No.
You can try it yourself. Like a
good scientist.
Science: What about
Religion?
Spirituality: Religion needs to try it as well.
Religion: Mysticism is for special people. For saints and sages. It isn’t for everyone.
Spirituality: No, it is for everyone. That’s the whole point behind Buddhism.
It’s a religion based on mysticism.
Science: Look, even if I try this meditation and it
changes the way I see the universe, that still doesn’t change the fact that
Religion can’t describe the universe the way science
can.
Spirituality: Right.
Well, you’re both going to have a problem with this, but here goes. Religion needs to let go of its myths and stories and
dogma.
Religion: Assuming I
did that, what do I have left besides morality?
Spirituality: You have me.
Spirituality. Which is what you
use to inform your teachings and your morality, instead of myths and dogma.
Science: So, you two need me, but I don’t need you.
Spirituality: No, you need me as well. Spiritual science….
Science: There’s no such thing.
Spirituality: And
spiritual religion. Stop seeing us as
three separate things. See us as interconnected. If you think of a spiritual worldview the
same way you think of other worldviews, it will make sense. A group of scientists from 1850, 1900, 1950
and today would all have different worldviews that would inform their ideas of
what science is. Each one is a little
wider than the last. A scientist with a
spiritual worldview will be wider still.
Their science will encompass even more.
Religion: So, you’re saying that religions, like
science, need to be based on direct experience.
If that direct experience agrees with science but not with scripture,
then we have to change the scripture.
And if that direct experience reveals a sense of the numinous, we need
to acknowledge that this experience is available to everyone.
Spirituality: Exactly.
Religion: Then what
is my role outside of mysticism?
Spirituality: The same
as before, only now your authority comes from the individual’s direct
experience. You are the paths and
practices that the individual can follow to this direct realization.
Religion: So the traditions that disagree on cosmology
and mythology can agree on you, on spirituality?
Spirituality: They can,
but they don’t have to be in total accord.
The variety that you offer is one of your strengths.
Science: All of this is fine and dandy for Religion, but what about me? How am I supposed to accept a direct
experience of the numinous, of Spirit as the Ground of all Being, of something I
can’t measure if I can’t describe it in the terms of science, with math and
equations?
Spirituality: Well, you can measure your own experience and
compare it to people who are also engaged in the experiment. As for math, what you’re really talking about
is faith and belief.
Science: Right.
I can have faith in math, I can believe in the theories it proves, but
how can I have faith in you or Religion?
Spirituality: Well, faith and belief are very
intertwined. Basically there are four
kinds of belief. The first is based on
faith. We believe something because it
is presented to us by someone we trust.
Whether it’s God or Spirit or quantum theory, if we believe it on the
basis of someone else’s authority, then it’s faith. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t have the math to understand quantum
mechanics, so I have to take your word for it.
The second kind of belief is based on supposition or hypothesis derived
from observation. You look at the world
and see a pattern and from that you extrapolate a supposition about something
and your belief rests on that chain of logic.
Your belief in the effectiveness of meditation could be based on the
fact that it seems to have produced similar results repeatedly throughout
history. The third kind of belief is
based on direct experience; upon knowledge gained through the senses or by
logic. My belief in the realities
revealed by prolonged meditation are based on engaging in a daily
practice. Your belief in the realities
of quantum physics are based on learning the math, performing the equations,
and trying the experiments that prove it.
The last kind of belief is similar to the third, but it is based on
direct experience or knowledge unclouded by the senses or logic. This kind of belief is only available to
those who have such experiences.
Religion: Since you’re explaining faith, what about
prayer? What about faith and service in
God?
Spirituality:
Look, you can still pray to God, or the Goddess, or as many gods as you
choose, but if you are immersed in a practice of transcending the ego-self, of
stepping beyond separateness, beyond person, then you will eventually move on
to worshipping Godhead, not God or Goddess, and you begin to see this in
everyone, everything, not as some being outside you. Worship of a God or Goddess can be a very
important stage on the path. You don’t
need to throw it out, you just need to eventually transcend it.
Religion: None of this is going to be an easy sell to
my friends.
Science: You’re friends will be more open than
mine.
Spirituality: It won’t
be an easy sell, and it will take quite a bit of time, but it is possible. When Einstein came up with the Theory of
Relativity, physicists didn’t immediately embrace what he was saying. Many of them continued to cling to a
Newtonian view of the universe, and many clung even more tightly when
Heisenberg came along and started making noises about his Uncertainty
Principle. The same will happen again
and it will be just as difficult for religion.
But fortunately the nature of religion is to shift and change over
time. What we really need are leaders
who are willing to push for change.
Science: So, I guess there’s a lot of work cut out for
us.
Religion: Decades, even centuries worth.
Spirituality: Yes, but the whole point is that none of us
have to do it alone. We can, and should,
all work together. Our futures depend on
it.