Science and Spirituality

The Old Divide

Are you a soul having a human experience? I am. Are you living in a concrete jungle? I am.

Seemingly, since the dawn of time man has had two faces – one of science – one of spirit. We live in a time when this is more visible than any other – a Brahmin gets in a plane to go chant on the river Ganges and an astrologer consults accurate star maps on a computer program to determine whether he will have a good day or not, a scientist makes a breakthrough discovery after isolating himself for 5 years in meditation and thought.

What is science – and how is it different from spirituality? Is not both a quest to understand our existence? Science is rooted in logic and laws. Spirituality seems to be rooted in intuition and wisdoms. It is easy to see that they are coming closer to each other – but somehow they have never been further apart. These days they are not too far apart from each other – but far from getting to the point. Why are we here? What do we believe and how should we live out our days?

To me at least it seems that science and spirituality is going through a phase of unparalleled popularity – but of little consequence. It is just something that we expect as part of our daily dose. You have to drink your vitamins, be creative, you have to stress and you have to be spiritual, and one way of doing it is watching a nature program on TV about some new observation that has been made about the mating behaviours of some strange type of animal.

To take the debate to another level – a recent study showed that there is no genetic basis for race differentiation and that race is primarily a social construct. This is exciting scientific news – we have done another study on genes, and now know more about genes – but also a very spiritual study. Our prejudices are shown to us and our pre-conceived ideas about the world are challenged.

Take two people from the same household, and compare them. They will believe differently, have had different life experiences, and could be totally disconnected. Examples abound.

Take two people on this planet, from anywhere – and they could have had exactly the same experiences. I saw a story the other day on television where a girl released a balloon that flew from the UK to the US, and it landed in the garden of a girl with exactly the same name and surname, the same age and generally the same attitude in life. After a lengthy confusion and consternation to find out how this could be – these two girls became best friends and are friends to this day.

This was after the grandfather prompted the girl to send the balloon with her name on it with the hope of finding a pen pal. Seems that it is a marvel – a wonder – a spiritual destiny that two girls with the same name should meet under such random circumstances.

Two Ways of Seeking Truth

Science and spirituality does however not get juxtaposed. We are asked to believe that understanding of new work in the group theory in mathematics is essential to explain an uncharted area in particle physics, which may explain why we observe spirits from a quantum level. We are also led to believe that the vibrations of people, animals and in-animate objects may have an impact on rainfall patterns globally.

Last night I saw a rerun of a TV show where someone was talking to spirits from the afterlife. You know the story – “She is standing here next to me… I see a little girl… She suffered a hard time… She said, you need to remember the good times you had…” – and the audience member goes “That must be my brother’s niece that passed away when I was little.” – And the audience goes “Oooh…” Somehow this is meant to represent spirituality.

Throughout all of this there is the recurrent theme of “Don’t worry – science can explain all these things…” UFO’s, Stonehenge, the Easter Island Statues, the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, the Loch Ness Monster, Astrology, the Tarot, Poltergeist – all of these have been investigated, in part explained – and brought into the fold of scientific knowledge. What it does not mean is that we give up our superstitions, are less afraid of strange objects in the sky or certain if there is alien life. It just means that we still have things that will take time to observe.

Both science and spirituality have taken us places throughout the centuries. Without either the Renaissance would not have been possible, the liberation of women would still only be talked about – and the 90’s would have been a lot less interesting. However – today – it seems that both have become an end in itself.

I have many friends that follow one fad after another. This week it is Feng-Shui, next week karmic readings and still the next holistic life styling. Also, every day we hear: “Scientists have made a discovery in experimenting with rats that could one day lead to people having…” And somehow we know that we are still living a good life.

I heard of a well-funded study that was done to determine what makes bulls charge humans and it was found that aggressive movement generally causes bulls to be aggravated and challenged. This is represented as science.

I think the biggest impact that has been made by science is to inform us about our history, which is part of our spirituality. I live in South Africa – and heard of the most comical story recently. It is known that some Hebrew people fled to Africa during biblical times. An anthropologist was amazed to find a group of Africans in South Africa practicing Judaism in the same way as the Ancient Jewish religion. After genetic testing and some other wonderfully scientific investigations – they discovered that they origins of these people had to be from Jewish descent. You may say – this is of no consequence – but it is! The first thing the elder of the tribe told the scientist is that they are of Hebrew descent.

Another story is about a Navajo elder who told scientist that a certain killer disease that was wiping out dozens of people comes from mice, two years after strong rains. After much scientific research it was determined that the rains led to a bumper crop of a certain nut, which led to in increase in the mice population. The mice population did carry the disease in question, but that two years after the heavy rains, cyclical weather conditions was usually such that the mice dung dried fast enough to become powder and this was the only condition wherein it could infect humans. Scientist first had to correlate their data and follow their tracks from a sample from a person carrying a disease in the Vietnam War, from fifty years earlier – where exactly the same phenomenon was observed.

Popularity Without Depth

It seems ironical – but it proves that science now gives us the ability to prove our spirituality. The miracle is that wisdom is just the compression of historical knowledge – ripe for science to ‘rediscover’. I’m sure that one day we will find Feng-Shui has a deep scientific principle, there really is a God and vitamins are really bad for you.

The increase in television series, books and casual chitchat about science and spirituality makes for good industry. Some of the most popular TV series over the past decade has been about people searching for their spirituality. Many Eastern philosophies have become mainstream and commercial practices. Many movies are made about paranormal phenomena and strange happenings that cannot be explained.

In talking about industry it reminds me of a former employer that insisted that I attend a tarot-card reading with him before he employed me. Well, what can you say, when it is about a job – you go! The tarot-reader went on about negative vibrations and how there is a dark side and that in time we will find ourselves struggling and so forth. He was convinced that he should not employ me – and he did – and there were good times, and bad – but somehow we never mentioned the conversation with the tarot-lady again.

How many times have we been certain that something strange is going to happen – or that something is a certain way, and we can just not explain why? To me that is where spirituality ends and science starts. If you observe something – you can study it – if you can study it – you will at some point in time engage in reductionist and positivistic thinking and will build a theory to explain what is happening. This is science.

How many times have you just sit and a new or interesting thought came to you? You walked past something that you have walked past a thousand times before and you see something so startling about it that you are amazed that none of the other hundreds of people that walked past the same thing have not seen it. This is where science stops and spirituality begins. For in discovering the newness of life – through our natural instinct to be a participant in this worldly race – a wonderful event is created and we can enjoy the pleasure of that moment – and the memories of such moments past. In trying to rationalise it – you destroy it – you break it into pieces and may reconstruct the picture – but it will never be the same as the first time.

When the Library of Alexandria burned down – it was a great loss to humanity – as we lost a lot of the knowledge of ancient times in one fell swoop. What if there was a nuclear bomb in space and we lost all our digitised knowledge today – would we be able to reconstruct our science – and our spirituality?

It then highlights that the apparent abundance of science and spirituality that is going around, could in fact be a negative and divisive force. Somehow we are missing large parts of the picture through everybody doing their own thing. There is no central or unifying thought that brings it all together – it use to be religion – but this has passed.

There are also more than 6 billion people on the planet, and the time for a great discovery to reach everyone that it may affect is so long – that people are not keeping up. I’m thinking of the millions of people that seem to be re-inventing the same things over and over – and forgetting the old things.

The Question of How to Live

A person sitting for years and years and then finding out that someone has moved past this point in knowledge and wisdom and is three steps ahead. I know of a doctor that has been working on refining an alternative health therapy that was invented in the fifties. He had great success in treating a range of diseases. Before the internet and this massive flow of information, that is reshaping the world – he was considered a leader in his field. Somehow today – his thoughts are archaic, science has advanced to a deeper level of understanding, and an old doctor needs to re-invent all his learning to be able to process the daily advances streaming into his desk from all over the world.

You can say that science has helped him and the patients who he has served – but somehow it has taken away the spiritual power of what he was doing – made it less. It has made the process far more mechanical and less friendly. On the other side of the coin – I heard of a rug-maker in the Middle East that have been able to reconstruct ancient ways of rug-making through using science and technology, and some wisdom of the elders, and through this process being able to reawaken the spiritual power among people of ancient hand-woven rugs. This has made rug making far less mechanical and a lot friendlier.

There are a lot of areas that still challenge the links between science and spirituality – some of the hot topics being centred on cloning, owning patents to seeds, stem cell research and other. These disciplines are constantly faced with the ethical dilemma of the apparent ownership of spirit. I believe that there will be a time when these issues will be overcome and that science and spirituality will move to a next level of interaction.

There is a Zen tale that talks about a master storyteller. As a young man a Zen pupil was listening to the story told by an old lady. The boy was so enchanted by the story that he asked a master storyteller to tell the story like his mother. The master storyteller informed the young man that this would take much hard work and dedication – but took up the challenge. The master storyteller told the story to the young man over and over again and the young man disapproved – it was not the same. They had a quarrel and the master left the young man. Through many years of travel, study and of story-telling the master storyteller was never able to tell the story quite like the old lady.

He went back to the young man a couple of times, learned the subtleties of voice and actions but could not reproduce the enchantment in his audience. He was an old man – when one day he met the young man again – now an old man – and was asked to tell the story that the old lady told. He told the story – exactly as the old lady – the man was enchanted and the storyteller was enlightened.

This story represents to me the balance between science and spirituality. The master storyteller was a scientist that made his audience laugh and cry at will – yet he could not achieve the same quality as an old lady that told an old legend to a boy. Through science and studying he was in the end able to reproduce the story – through having made it is own challenge, spiritually. Only through travelling the journey – can we comment on it! Only in achieving certain skills and disciplines are we able to enact that which our spirit has in store.

In the end I would say that both science and spirituality are very human concepts. Slowly but surely there is a voice that is rising that it saying that all life is about people and the interactions of people amongst each other, and the universe around us. This is exciting as it gives us the ability to accept this as fundamental and change our scientific and spiritual paradigms towards understanding each other and the world around us. We are starting to understand that human interaction; the social fabric, the environment and economies are interlinked. We are exchanging more information and becoming more social beings. In doing so we have learned that taking good care of your body and mind, your soul and your relations are critical for both longevity and good human relations.

We have learned that science is a necessary tool for establishing a future for this world, and possibly others – in that it informs us of the actions we need to take to be a better person for ourselves and for others. Science also challenges our spiritual beliefs – and Spirituality challenges science to explain the things that we see.

Towards an Integrated View

I often wonder if James Redfield is right in the Celestine prophesies and further Insights, that one-day we will split into two worlds. He postulates that one will be inherently scientific and one based on spirituality. Judging by the progress in both fields today – I somehow think that if we do it right we may not need to.

The question of science and spirituality then becomes one of saying – should I choose science or spirituality – and I believe the good news is that we should choose – neither and both. Science and Spirituality are just different phases of the same process. Science may bring inspiration and spirituality may bring clarity – it could also be the other way around.

Those among us being able to recognise their spirituality are souls having a human experience – right now – enjoying the wisdoms of sciences past. Those among us who are scientist are working towards a point in time when all is revealed and the two elements of science and spirituality is one. In today’s world we are all scientists and spiritualists – for only in being both are we able to survive and grow.

(2752 words – Article Published in Resurgence Magazine)