Science and Spirituality

 Robert Anderson BSc(Hons) PhD

4 February 1942 to 5 December 2008

 

Bob compiled this draft script in preparation for turning it into a lecture. Sadly, the accompanying Power Point presentation was not completed. Nevertheless, we at CONNECTED feel that the script is worthy of inclusion in our web site. We acknowledge and thank those people who provided material.

 

We live in an age of marvels. People go to the moon, electronics have made us a global village.  Using satellite navigation we can pin-point our position anywhere on the earth to within a few feet.  We can "see" through time to the beginning of our universe with the Hubble reflector and we can hold encyclopaedias in a microchip. And yet something is radically wrong with the way we live our lives.

When Captain Edgar Mitchell travelled to the moon on Apollo 14 he said, and I quote: “I was a pragmatic scientist and engineer as you'd find any where.” His vision of planet Earth floating in the vastness of space, in all its incredible, majestic, breathtaking beauty, changed his life for ever.

After his return, he often lay awake for hours at night struggling with the enigma of why - if everything had meaning and direction - is man hell bent on destroying it all? Why the threat of nuclear holocaust, of crime, of the struggle for power? For answers, Dr Mitchell turned from outer space to inner space.

Mitchell’s experience in space was spiritual and he wanted to relate it to his purely scientific background. He sought to do this in a way that would promote new awareness, a new consciousness that would allow people to see their fundamental unity with nature and the functioning of their universe.

Dr Mitchell is by no means the only great scientist to realise this unity. The well-known psychologist, Dr Samuel Sandweiss, tells us: “The world today seems to be in the grip of a supreme moral and spiritual crisis. People everywhere are feeling frustrated and helpless. They are anxiously wondering what is in store for humanity. Never has there been so much distrust, hatred and violence as is witnessed today in almost every country of the world.”

Yet we live in one of the most advanced technological age known. We have nuclear energy, computers. The Internet has effectively given us the world as our library. And the advent of E-mail has turned the world into the size of a large town. Personal computers are now used to obtain any manner of interesting information. There is even software available now to even help you choose a mate. The CD, television, and video should fill our day with music, gaiety and colour. Instead, we are either bored, frightened, frustrated or violent.

Sandweiss also said: “All hopes that science raised for building a better world order have proved false.” It has failed.

So from where does this problem arise? Attacking science is not a solution. We all know the joke: We need science to help us solve all the problems we wouldn’t have if there were no science. Science merely has, as its sole objective, the quest for truth in the physical world around us. Science studies, through observation and experimentation, the phenomena of Nature, so as to explain natural happenings around us in terms of definite principles or laws. Thus science has provided the basic knowledge for the invention of innumerable varieties of devices. These should have made our lives much happier. However, this is not the case.

Because science has no say in the way that this knowledge is used. the knowledge becomes a double-edged sword.

The right use makes science an instrument of valuable service to us all. When the same knowledge is improperly used, we have all the dreadful acts of human degradation that we are a witness to, from the minor acts of aggression to the major acts of terrorism and nuclear war. There is, however, a very subtle side to science. That is the influence which science has on our outlook and philosophy of life. That is what I want to look at today because I think this is the transformational gateway through which science can expand its spiritual vision.

Science upholds matter and external phenomena as the ultimate reality. This tends to twist our philosophy of life towards a highly materialistic relationship with the world and the people with whom we share it. This philosophy of pure “pragmatism” has gradually spread and grown in strength as it covers more and more aspects of our lives and our relationships. We accept only that which we can see or that can be demonstrated to us in a laboratory. We even have a saying for it. If we can see it, touch it, then it must be real. We have, in effect, thrown the baby out with the bath water.

This approach to life, like science itself, has beneficial as well as harmful influences. Its beneficial influence is that it has generated a powerful introspective look at religion, particularly among thinking people. This trend has been very helpful in rationalising religion. In the course of centuries, religion has gathered an increasing number of cobwebs: e.g. superstition, meaningless rites, bigotry and blind belief in the occult.

The tremendous acceleration in scientific progress during the last century has motivated many people to examine critically their own belief systems. Many intellectuals have been motivated to sieve the grain of true faith from the chaff of dogma and fanaticism.

Reform is essential. Our fast developing communications are bringing societies of different religions into closer contact. People are being forced to live together more and more as a global community. As this reform has gathered strength, it has awakened both the East and the West to eternal spiritual truths. Intellectual giants, such as Swami Vivekananda, Annie Beasant, Aurobindo and Einstein, have raised the image of religion. They have brought to the surface these deep eternal truths. What Huxley called the “Perennial philosophy.”

Thus science has revitalised man’s spiritual search. As such it is helping to form a bridge between science and spirituality, its ideal being or “The world is one family” or, as the Vedas so beautifully express, it in Sanskrit vasadaiva kutumbakam.

Obviously we have to avoid the malevolent effects of science. We must use its positive potential. To do this, it is essential to bring a healthy balance between the two aspects of the self - our spiritual and material outlook. In this way, the our 'spiritual perception' must be the guiding factor. A balance of spiritual and material aspects should pave the way for spirituality and science to develop a unified field of knowledge.

Albert Einstein said, and I quote: “A science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This sense of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion … cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest mainspring of scientific research.”

Today, thank goodness science has indeed begun to recognise the existing boundaries of consciousness underlying phenomena. This has led to revolutionary ideas. Ideas such as the ‘Morphogenic Field’ of Rupert Sheldrake and the ‘Holographic Universe’ of David Bohm. These ideas have stimulated men such as Dr Wilder Penfield and Professor Pribram, two great neurosurgeons, to apply them in his own field. Pribram realised that by using the holographic principles he had found an explanation for memory and the way in which the human brain functioned. There is now an impressive amount of evidence suggesting that our brain uses holographic principles to perform its operations. Perhaps the most mind-boggling aspect of Pribram’s holographic model of the brain is what happens when it is put together with Bohm’s theory.

All the religions of the East have long upheld that our material world is an illusion. Science now agrees with this theory. It is being forced to look at the "spiritual" side of manifestation. In 1997, the renowned scientific journal Nature published comments examining the hypothesis that the physical universe might be a living, information-processing organism. Science is beginning to realise that there are other factors to consider.

Although science gives us laws which fit the reality of our world, there seems to be far deeper spiritual truths to grapple with. For instance, is what we see really there? Or is it just what we think we see? If it is not there, why do we think we see it?

For many years, it was thought that there was a one-to-one correspondence in seeing. Today, this premise is no longer tenable. The new paradigm shift in understanding should alter our whole outlook on life. What we think is real, may well be very different from actual reality.

To better understand our reality, we must understand the brain and its functions. The brain computes what we think and sense. One of the greatest mysteries yet to be solved is how does it do this? A brilliant theory has been proposed by Pribram, the Stanford neuroscientist; much of it based on Dr Penfield's work. Pribram’s current proposal is a model that covers all the areas of the brain's functions. Using the theory of David Bohm, Pribram combined his brain research with the idea of the holograph.

Covering the areas of normal and paranormal perception, Pribram has taken things out of the supernatural and explained them as part of nature. To understand why Bohm and Pribram make this startling assertion, we must first understand a little about holograms.

A hologram is a three-dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern - the area where the two laser beams co-mingle - is captured on film. When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines, but as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

The three-dimensional quality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose. Indeed, even if the halves are divided again and again, each snippet of film will always contain a smaller but intact version of the original image.

Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.

Just as light waves travel through the hologram, Pribram feels that nerve impulses travel through a network of fine fibres in the brain. Can we say, is this relevant to us? Yes, very relevant, because our brain, like the hologram, deals in decoding, storing and showing images. To see, to hear, or to use any of our senses, our brains, again like the hologram, perform complex mathematical computations on the information fed into it.

Dr Pribram seems to agree with David Bohm, that maybe our whole universe is a hologram. If this is true, there is no such thing as solidity, it is merely an illusion. Or as Vivekananda told us over 150 years ago, "It's all frozen energy." This means that we see things as a child sees an animated cartoon - by illusions.

For a long time, man has been looking at things through lenses that change things in order for him to see them. In doing so, we are not viewing what is actually there. The brain may well be our lens, and we may be viewing a reality that has been very limited, simply so that we might understand it.

This leaves an exciting question. What would we see if we observed reality without this simplification? Dr Pribram suggests that, if we saw reality without the computations performed by our brain, we would know a world without time or without space, just events.

I will say that again. If we saw reality without the computations performed by our brain, we would know a world without time or without space, just events.

Our brain constructs a physical reality by explaining frequencies from a dimension beyond time and space. If the brain is a hologram, interpreting a holographic universe, it has access, under certain conditions, to all information. If there is no time or space, there is no here or there; psychic phenomena, for instance, can and does therefore occur in nature. Pribram explains paranormal actions in this way.

Things are really not solid. When we think in a certain manner, it creates our reality, simply because it is already part of the hologram. But - and this is important - we have the power to change that reality. People like Uri Geller have a reality that is different from ours because in his reality the things we think are impossible, are possible.

This of course brings up the obvious question, "If this is true, why do we all see the same thing?" One possible answer is that our brains register a relative reality. They have been programmed by our culture, our background, and so the mathematical computations will be similar for us all. A good example of this comes as a question, Why can’t we perform actions that are considered paranormal? It is simply because we do not think we can. We may sincerely want to, but that will not change what we subconsciously think is possible.

Many excellent examples of this are regularly shown to us by hypnotic suggestion. These reach into our deeper levels of consciousness and enable us to perform unbelievable feats. Under hypnosis, people have been observed raising blisters on the skin or making worts vanish. Because our culture says these actions are not be possible, that is what we accept as our reality. To change our reality, we have to drastically change our innermost subconscious thoughts.

David Bohm's entire theory on the holographic model is revolutionary in concept. Added to Karl Pribram’s theory of brain function, it becomes the most important paradigm shift since Isaac Newton and his description of universal gravitation and the three laws of motion which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries. Professor Stanislav Grof, who worked extensively in this field said: “This new data is of such far-reaching relevance that it could Revolutionise our understanding of the human psyche, of psychopathology, and of the therapeutic process. Some of the observations transcend in their significance the framework of psychiatry and represent a serious challenge to the current Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm of Western science. It could change drastically our image of human nature, of culture and of reality itself.”

In order to understand how this new scientific paradigm fits into the scheme of things, it is necessary to have an overall scheme of things to begin with. We need to look to, what Huxley termed "the perennial philosophy". And here the ancient texts of the Vedas of India come to our rescue. They offer such a philosophy and are also the oldest. These ancient teachings have maintained that oneness is a fact of our universe.

You may recall Francis Thompson’s famous poem - "Thou can'st not stir a flower, without troubling a star.” This is not just an interesting, hypothetical, esoteric poetic statement, it is absolutely and factually true, that in stirring a flower, the star knows about it.

To return to the perennial philosophy. The most striking feature is that it presents "Being" and "Consciousness" as a hierarchy of dimensional-levels. What do I mean by that? It moves from the lowest and densest realms to the highest, most subtle ones.

The lowest would be the material realm. Using the Vedanta terms because the west has no equivalent, the lowest is called annamayakosa. This is the level made of food - that is, the physical body and the material cosmos around us.

The next level is pranamayakosa - the sheath of biological functions, life-breath, emotions, bioenergy and so on.

The next highest level is the "the sheath of mind – manomayakosa. The mind stays (myopically) close to the five senses. This is approximately the level we in the West would call mind, or mental-ego.

Beyond mind is the what Buddhists call manas – vijnanamayakosa. This is a very high form of mind, so high, in fact, that it is better to refer to it by a different name - the most common being ‘the subtle realm.’ This is said to include insights and visions, an extraordinary clarity of awareness, and a consciousness that reaches far beyond the ordinary mind and body state.

And beyond the subtle, lies the causal realm – in Sanskrit anandamayakosa. N.B. Ananda bliss. This is a realm of perfect transcendence, so perfect that it is said to reach beyond the conception and imagination of any ordinary individual. It is a realm of formless radiance, of radical insight into all of manifestation.

These ancient words give us approximately six major levels: physical, biological, mental, subtle, causal and absolute awareness.

Interestingly, according to the perennial traditions, each of these various levels has an appropriate field of study. This is far easier to see. The study of level 1 is basically that of physics and chemistry, the study of nonliving things. Level 2 is the realm of biology, the study of life processes. Level 3 is the level of both psychology (when awareness is 'turned in") and philosophy (when it is "turned out"). Level 4, the subtle, is the realm of saintly religion; that is, religion which aims for visionary insight. Level 5, the causal, is the realm of much higher experiences. This path involves the transcendence of all subject-object duality in formless consciousness. Level 6, the ultimate, awaits any who push through the final barriers of levels 4 and 5 to awaken as ultimate awareness.

Each level transcends but includes its predecessor, so each higher study envelops its junior disciplines - but not vice versa. For example, the study of biology uses physics, but the study of physics does not generally use biology. This is another way of saying the lower levels do not, embrace the higher levels.

So, to return to our initial question, does science lead us to an understanding of religious truth? I repeat what Albert Einstein said when asked a similar question; “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”

Finally, I would like to finish by giving you Vivekananda's famous definition of man and God: “Man is an infinite circle whose circumference is nowhere, but the centre is located in one spot. God is an infinite circle whose circumference is nowhere but whose centre is everywhere.”

 

Robert Anderson BSc(Hons) PhD

Robert Anderson was a Quaker, teacher and writer. He was a Trustee of Physicians and Scientists for Global Responsibility (www.psgr.org.nz), a member of Amnesty International, a Theosophist, and a campaigner for peace and disarmament. He believed everyone has the right to equality and respect, freedom of speech and religion He lectured on many subjects to meet the public's right to be independently informed on issues of science, the environment and social justice. He was passionate about making this world a better place for the generations to come. He authored eleven books and regularly wrote for a number of periodicals.

Enquiries about books written by Robert Anderson should be addressed to naturesstar@xtra.co.nz