Subject: Science and Religion: Toward an Integral Vision Some years ago, while on a walk in Big Sur, California with Rupert
Sheldrake, the topic of the relationship between religion and science
came up. He is both a great scientist, though regarded as unorthodox
by his critics, and a person with a deep spirituality. I asked him
if these two ways of seeing the world would ever heal the rift
between them. Rupert turned to me and said: "The future of science
and religion will be a congenial one." Everywhere we see evidence of
this congeniality flowering: in books, symposia, workshops, dialogues
etc. it is explored. Our gathering of Future Visions is further
evidence of this new relationship, and really the urgency of it.
In an issue of Science three years ago, there was a fascinating
article that reflects this new development in our age. The article's
title was instructive, "Science and God: A Warming Trend". The
article mentions that 71% of scientists believe in God, 40% in the
biblical deity, and 31% in a transcendent principle, or ground of
being. Added to this is the slow erosion of science's exclusive hold
on culture in the last two decades. This erosion represents an
abandonment of the attitude of scientism, and a realization that
there are many authentic ways of knowing. The dawn of this insight
makes a collaboration possible and the results, ultimately beneficial
to our planet.
When science and religion finally unite their efforts, the
consequence will be nothing less than a revolution in culture
affecting every aspect of our lives. For centuries these two ways
of knowing and being have been at odds, held in an uneasy contrast by
a mutual suspicion, competition and often open conflict. Their
relationship got off to a difficult start because of fear of science
and an intolerant attitude in the Church during a long period when it
exercised political and cultural dominance, subsequently reinforced
and hardened by an equally intolerant and arrogant attitude by some
scientists, though many have always been open to faith. In this
history there has been fault on both sides, but now a new age is
being born in which these two powerful forces are coming together in
a common pursuit to discover a new collaborative approach to
knowledge, wisdom and action. I believe the friendship now
developing between science and religion is here to stay, and I'd like
to suggest that the rift has been primarily an epistemological one,
and that healing it will require a recognition of the multivalent
nature of knowing, a knowing that has its one ground in consciousness
itself as the "place" of all things.
Sometimes this multivalent nature of knowing, that is, that there
are many ways of knowing, i.e., religious, mystical, scientific, or
empirical, aesthetic, interpersonal, psychological, intuitive, cosmic
and historical, to name a few, exist within the same person.
Oftentimes scientists are exceptional in their fields and are also
mystics and poets, or musicians, having impressive intuitive
capacities beyond the usual. Ken Wilber devoted a book compiling the
intuitive, mystical utterances of some our most gifted scientists.
His Quantum Questions is a useful contribution to our discussion.
Some of our greatest physicists are capable of knowing reality, or a
part of it, in a number of ways, not simply empirically, although all
ways involve experience.
But the scientist who is also a mystic, even though such a one
realizes the mystical is valid and ultimate, is not permitted to take
into account mystical knowledge within the range of scientific
methodology, even though the scientist knows it is real knowledge.
This situation has led to what I call epistemological schizophrenia
in the scientist, fragmentation in our understanding of reality, or
compartmentalization, rather than integral knowledge. We need to
address this lingering situation, and any attempt to integrate
religion and science must take into account this unfortunate impasse.
Again, Ken Wilber has devoted considerable intellectual resources to
discover ways out of this narrow-minded fixation of the old science,
and yet without sacrificing rigorous scientific methodological
standards. His Marriage of Sense and Soul is such an attempt, and
especially his notion of the four quadrants, or "corners" of knowing:
the upper left as subjectivity, or the interior-individual (the
intentional); the lower left as collective subjectivity, or
interior-collective (the cultural); the upper right as the exterior
-individual (the behavioral), and the lower right as the
exterior-collective (or the social).1 This insight is a corrective
and a reversal of epistemological schizophrenia. What he is doing is
making room for other ways of knowing as valid forms of knowledge,
even within the view of science itself, such as mystical experience,
aesthetic illumination, poetic imagination, interpersonal love, and
psychological reality. This is a very valuable contribution to
integral methodology, one that bridges the gap between science and
spirit by enlarging the context of knowledge. Only in this way will
there be a sufficient foundation for their eventual fruitful and
effective collaboration. In integrating science and religion
noetically, we are at the same time uniting all the spheres of
knowing.
The Primacy of Consciousness
Another significant hurdle to be overcome, indeed to be abandoned,
is that of dualism, and its destructive form of naive materialism,
which is a complete reductionism that ignores the central place of
consciousness, asserting it to be epiphenomenal to matter, and
derived from the material substratum. Every form of reductionism,
whether in physical science, philosophy, psychology, economics etc.
is always inadequate and simplistic. Materialism rests on the
postulate of pure objectivity of the old science, and this notion of
objectivity, as a working principle and dogma, requires dualism, or a
split between the mental and physical realms, a dichotomy we owe to
Descartes.
This split between mind and body, however, is reported to our
perception by our mind, that is, by our consciousness. When we
really examine this matter carefully what we notice is that
everything -absolutely everything - depends on consciousness: our
memories, ideas, perceptions, emotions, musings of the imagination,
dreams, learning, thinking, our relationships, our experience of the
natural world and the cosmos, the places we visit, where we live, the
schools we've attended, the movies we've seen, the pets we have, the
books we read, and the sports we enjoy, cooking, eating, and
love-making, all happen because we are aware. They exist in and
through consciousness, even the body. We have a body because we know
we have a body. In this sense, the body exists in the mind. To
drive this point home to students and audiences, I often ask them to
pinch their hand. Then I tell them that pinching and what it reveals
is a cognitive act! It's an act of knowing, of mind, of awareness,
or consciousness. It is the mind, in its perception of the hand, of
the body, that makes possible the body, not the other way round as
materialism would have it. The same is true of the brain. I have to
be conscious to know that I have a brain, and consciousness cannot be
reduced to that which it makes possible. Let me express it as a
principle: that which makes perception possible is the basis of all
reality, because without it, there would be no reality for us.
Whether we like it or not, whether we accept it or not, we are
hermetically sealed in consciousness. There is no objective reality
that we can verify without appeal to our own experience within
consciousness itself. We do not know if there is an outside to
consciousness, since we have no experience of it. Materialism has
merely asserted it quite gratuitously, without any actual
verification. Verification is beyond our grasp, for to establish
that a purely objective, independently existing reality is there, we
would have to get outside of our consciousness, and perceive that
supposedly real world, but we cannot. To get outside, and see what's
there, we'd still have to be aware, still conscious. Hence, we are
confined to consciousness, and there is no outside. The hypothetical
objectivity of reality is intrinsically unverifiable!
Since all experience is mediated through consciousness, the
postulate of pure objectivity is indefensible, and is holding us back
from progress to that integration of science and religion we would
all like to see. We can achieve what can be called a shared
subjectivity whose contents we can verify as universally valid in the
experience of others, and we can do this keeping in mind Ken Wilber's
four quadrants as our guide. This gives us a modified objectivity,
but again it rests on our shared subjective experience. To move in
this direction, which I believe is inevitable, is to announce once
and for all the validity and truth of the primacy of consciousness
itself. It is in and through this primacy that religion and science
will finally be "married", to use Ken Wilber's metaphor.
The Nature of Consciousness
There are many today who have awakened to the absolute place of
consciousness in knowing, being, reality and life.2 Albert Einstein
once remarked: "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is
that it is comprehensible." I believe it is comprehensible because
consciousness is its basis. Often we hear reports of how pervasive
intelligence is in nature and the cosmos, that it is at work on all
levels, from the subatomic, quantum level, to the organic, natural,
and cosmic levels. I have a question here. Is it that intelligence
is in everything, or rather that everything is intelligent because
everything is aware. I think it is the latter, and I believe that
everything participates in a vast, universal system of consciousness,
with other realms, reaching to the most ultimate, the Divine itself.
All reality is internal, that is, is happening again in
consciousness, or as Leibniz put it in his Monadology, all relations
are internal, that there are no "windows" to an outside. We know
everything from within in a unitive, non-dual sense.
The Upanishadic seers knew thousands of years ago that Brahman, or
God is Consciousness, and the human is also consciousness, that
everything, including the universe, is within us, that is, within our
conscious range of experience. Meister Eckhart, the Christian mystic
of the 13th century understood the role of consciousness in its
mediating function, when in the context of contemplative method, he
observed: "The eye in which I see God is the same eye in which God
see me. My eye and God's eye are one eye and one seeing, one knowing
and one loving."3 Needless to say, this "eye" isn't the ocular
faculty, but is the mind, or self-awareness itself. That is the
"place" of encounter, the bridge that unites the Divine with the
human.
In this same "place" religion and science meet, and are united.
They exist in mind as parallel activities of consciousness. The
whole of nature and the cosmos exist in mind, as does human and
angelic reason. Consciousness is also the elusive unified field that
integrates the four forces of nature. It is the basis of love, and
the whole range of emotion, for love and emotion as such are
expressions of awareness. It is the matrix in which all principles,
natures, concepts, notions, mathematical equations and insights
subsist. The sea of Consciousness is where all things dwell and are
revealed, the realm of Spirit.
The infinite reality of Consciousness contains the human as a
regional or species consciousness, and individual human knowers as
local awareness within species or regional mind, or spirit. When we
have a mystical experience, an aesthetic awakening, an interpersonal
love eruption, we break out of our local, and often our regional
awareness, and begin to ascend to other levels of consciousness
beyond the horizon of the human, even to the ultimate realm of Divine
Consciousness itself. This Divine Consciousness is not a cold,
analytical reason, but has "heart", is animated by unconditional
compassion and love, an infinite kindness, mercy and sensitivity, a
concern for all that is and can be.
Mysticism as the Further Meeting Place of Science and Religion
If consciousness has primacy and is ultimate, then religion and
science can find integration there, and can explore that unity in
mysticism itself, the very "heart" of reality, the nature of Spirit.
This is one reason why so many scientists are mystics. Well,
actually, everyone is a mystic by virtue of their existence, but not
everyone knows it, or accepts it. Mysticism is the awakening to the
inner interdependence of everything, and their unity in the fontal
Source, the Divine. It is the endless horizon of essential, inward
gazing connectivity. It is the common ground alike of the religions4
and the sciences with the religions. Mysticism as the direct, or
unmediated experience of Ultimate Reality in Consciousness is the
goal of all knowing, since whether as a mystic or a scientist, we
want to know what is true in an unqualified and absolute sense, not
true now, only to be discarded later for a more adequate truth.
The two ways, science and religion have their roots in mysticism,
and it is there that they will discover their common identity as
parallel forms of knowing. Religion itself has its source in the
mystical. All the great world religions bear this out, for their
founders were all mystics who received a revelation, illumination, or
awakening from Ultimate reality, and this became institutionalized in
a tradition. The two ways are complementary to each other; they
complete each other, and they refine the picture of reality for us.
We need both of them; they are actually forms of each other.
In September 1999 in Dharamsala, India, a hundred and ten of us
participated in the Synthesis or Dharamsala Dialogues. Representing
all disciplines of knowledge, we came to the realization that all
forms of knowing, and all activities must be grounded in
spirituality, since there is no knowledge for the sake of knowledge.
All knowledge must have a relationship to the practical life of
humankind and the suffering that exists on our planet. Spirituality
is the living out of the mystical, of that fundamental, and universal
coherence and intelligibility of consciousness that allows for
intrinsic interconnection, or interdependence, the primordial
intercoinherence that we call love, compassion, and sensitivity. The
fruit of all genuine knowledge and mystical life is sensitivity as a
vast, precious and effective awareness, a healing understanding.
Mysticism gives larger sight or vision to science, while science
grants precision to mysticism. Here is the real marriage, a new
species of knowing, being, having, and transforming. The integration
of science and religion is a journey into mystery, into the Divine,
into Spirit. Both mysticism and science are empirical insofar as
they are both concerned with and rooted in experience, though some
may argue that science is more mathematical than empirical. Mystics
and sages throughout time have taught us that an Ultimate Reality
exists, more than exists, is all that is, surrounding us on all
sides. Now we can discern that insight in the utter truth and
reality of consciousness itself, and its nature as caring, love,
compassion, concern in Heidegger's understanding. But the mystic
sage doesn't ask us to believe this, rather we are exhorted to find
out for ourselves through experience.
The Partnership of Science and Religion: Vision of its Task and Value
These two venerable activities of Spirit, of Consciousness have an
absolute and universal responsibility to discover together, to
wrought as partners, a new and more adequate view of this world, of
life, being, nature and the cosmos, the transcendent and the
Ultimate. Together they will find a way to inspire humankind to live
sustainably by convincing us of the necessity to embrace simplicity
as a basic survival strategy for all species. Simplicity of life
teaches us how to live harmoniously with nature, to enjoy its goods
in modest use, and to respect the rights of other species.
In this task and others, spirituality, or religion and the
scientific enterprise are agents of transformation. They are teaches
of this transformation that brings an expansion of understanding in a
more integral view of the real. They will free us from our odd
fixation on ourselves, our curiously destructive preoccupation with
anthropocentrism that has limited us to a kind of "geo-centrism" in
this anthropocentrism. They will lead us into the value of
other-centeredness and joy. These are essential thrusts of
transformation in the human. They will further advocate a stability
in virtue as preferable to a disintegrating permissiveness. The
virtues of their focus are again: mercy, compassion, love, kindness,
sensitivity, joy, and forgiveness. These virtues will move us to
other-centered action that will be productive of a new, universal
civilization whose heart is compassion and love rather than power and
money.
The difference this all makes is that (1) it will give a more
adequate view of reality based on an integral vision; (2) it allows
to emerge a new way of knowing based on the synthesis of the best in
each, one that mutually sustains and irradiates the other with its
wisdom; (3) it creates a culture of mutual inclusion in such a way
that the mystic becomes a scientist, while remaining a mystic, and
the scientist becomes a mystic, while remaining a scientist, and the
fruit of both benefits the world.
Wayne Teasdale
Chicago, IL
END NOTES
1 Ken Wilber, The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and
Religion (New York: Random House, 1998), chapter five.
2 Some of these include Amit Goswami, Fred Alan Wolf, Peter Russell,
to mention a few. Amit Goswami's book, The Self-Aware Universe: How
Consciousness Creates the Material World (New York: Tarcher/Putnam's
Sons, 1995), is especially significant. He has actually opened up a
whole new path, i.e., science within consciousness.
3 Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher, ed. Bernard McGinn, The
Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1986),
Sermon 12, p. 270.
4 I try to illustrate this point in my book, The Mystic Heart:
Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions
(Novato, CA: New World Library, 1999). I call this common ground
interspirituality.
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