Recently I wrote, Here I am, once again plugging my “Science, Spirit, and the Wisdom of Not-Knowing” essay.
I noted that since I wrote that essay around 1998, when I was still a believer of the Eastern religion variety, my views have changed a lot since then. Now I’m an atheist, so, yeah, that’s a big change from believing in the possibility of knowing God.
The past few days I’ve been reading the 24-page essay, as it had been a long time since I’d done this. Today I finished reading it, so figured this was a good time to critique what I wrote in 1998 from my current perspective.
First, it’s always highly interesting to me how we humans can come to very different conclusions about the nature of reality even as our basic personality and outlook on life remains the same. In 1998 I lived in the same house where I am now. I was married to the same woman. I had the same basic interests. All in all, my 50 year old self wasn’t hugely different from who I am now at 77 — aside from being 27 years older with more health problems.
So as I read the essay, it wasn’t like I was reading the words of a stranger. I could recollect why I was so convinced that embracing Spirit could lead to a knowledge of higher domains of reality that are off-limits to Science. (My essay personalizes Spirit and Science, hence the capital letters).
The essay is well-written, cogently argued, and persuasive. But, so what? There are countless writings on religion, philosophy, and the meaning of life that are well-written, cogently argued, and persuasive. To do this, all that is necessary is to lay out certain assumptions from which all else flows. In the case of my essay, those included:
- There is a supernatural realm with God inhabiting it
- Science is only able to learn about the material realm
- It is possible to know the supernatural realm and God
- This is accomplished by not-knowing the material realm in meditation/contemplation
- So the knowledge of Science is the ignorance of Spirit, and vice versa
Again, I make a strong case for these assumptions, quoting thoughtful writers about science, religion, mysticism, and philosophy. This is roughly akin to an attorney making a case for the guilt or innocence of someone charged with a crime. A prosecutor will make arguments of guilt. A defense lawyer will make arguments of innocence.
The internal consistency of those arguments can each be highly persuasive. Starting from certain assumptions, the defendant can either be made to appear wrongly accused or an obvious criminal. So what’s the difference between guilt or innocence? What’s the difference between God and the supernatural being real, or being unreal?
The quality of the evidence.
This is where my essay fell flat on its face. When I wrote it, I simply assumed that the five bullet points above were true. In my mind, they were. However, truth has to be something more than what simply feels true, or the word “truth” has no meaning.
Which doesn’t mean that everything real has to be supported by demonstrable evidence. Every night I have dreams. The dreams are real to me. I can’t prove that I’m dreaming about some particular subject, even though neuroscience can tell when someone is dreaming — but not what they’re dreaming about. But my essay didn’t view Spirit as a dream. I argued that Spirit is the essence of reality, more real than matter.
And I didn’t provide any evidence in support of that contention. In fact, I argued that it was impossible to provide any evidence, because it seems clear that the knowledge of mystics and God-believers has never resulted in any evidence of a supernatural realm that can be publicly inspected. If God wanted to be known, I argued, another moon could magically appear in the night sky with BELIEVE written on it.
Since nothing like this has ever occurred, I surmised that Spirit and Science investigate different domains of reality. Again, though, I assumed that a supernatural realm actually existed. The whole 24 page essay flowed from that highly dubious assumption. And that’s my central critique of myself.
I had talked myself into believing in God and the supernatural. This isn’t unusual, of course. Billions of people have done just that. But a belief isn’t objective truth. Evidence is needed for that to occur.
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>> What’s the difference between God and the supernatural being real, or being unreal?<<
Things, also abstract ones, are just what they are,
seldom what they look like or appear the be,
let alone how they are MADE to be seen.
The definition of "god" has everywhere and always been like an axioma in mathematics … it is an point , a concept from which everything starts that by itself cannot be proven or needs to
Bigbang, axioma, god and many other "things" are what they are.
Atheism by the way is just another religion as it needs a deity to be denied to exist ..it is a theism
If you cannot accept an axioma, there is no mathematics for you
If you cannot accept god it cannot have an function in your life not even as an atheist.
That .. by it self is ALRIGHT … nobody needs to climb the Mnt Everest. for whatever personal reason and irrespective from what others have to say, about that mountain and the climbing of it.
It is a personal choice that needs no justification, explanation, acceptation by others etc … BUT ….it has consequence for the life one is living .. that for sure.
“The quality of the evidence”
Bingo!
———-
The fact is, critical thinking is an art that is very little appreciated and understood. Critical thinking, as opposed to knowledge. Critical thinking, as opposed to intelligence.
Certainly knowledge is necessary, critical thinking cannot operate in a vacuum. Certainly intelligence is necessary, critical thinking cannot run without the fuel of intelligence. But it is critical thinking that is key in getting us to arrive at a clear sane reasonable understanding of ourselves and of the world and of reality in general.
And critical thinking is sadly in very short supply. There’s no reason at all why that should be so, it isn’t such a difficult skill to acquire, after all! And yet, somehow, even very knowledgeable and very intelligent people are sometimes/often lacking in this skill, this art. Which leads them to embrace all manner of halfwittery.
(Again: Critical thinking alone isn’t enough. We also need the fodder of knowledge, and the fuel of intelligence. But critical thinking is necessary. In the absence of critical thinking, properly applied, the best and the brightest among us can get lost in all manner of silliness.)
———-
Well, that, and one more thing: The fundamental desire to understand truth, accompanied with the intellectual integrity to never ever settle for anything less than that, no matter what.
The desire to understand reality, rather than giving in to the temptation of settling for what panders to our biases, what we find comfortable, what makes us feel important, what gives us hope, what …well, anything and everything, that keeps us from seeking to understand reality, and to never ever settle for anything else. That straightforward foundational desire and intent.
That too is sadly lacking, oftentimes. And in the absence of this necessary foundational item, even critical thinking can end up becoming no more than just a bag of tricks, that instead of clarifying and illuminating reality, ends up obfuscating it instead. Some of the comments right here bear ample testimony to this.
———-
As far as that last, the intellectual integrity thing: I completely enjoyed your excellent critique of your carefully written out essay, Brian, that I’m sure you fully believed in passionately at that time. I enjoyed the clarity with which you dissect your own thinking, and identify those five central axioms, via which you argue for the separate-magisteria POV. And I completely appreciate how completely you dismantle the whole faulty structure you’d yourself propped up back then, via an essay that no doubt would have taken a lot out of you and that clearly meant a lot to you. That willingness to fully acknowledge, and correct, one’s own past errors; and to not only welcome valid critique, but to actually become, oneself, the most incisive critic of one’s own folly? That’s intellectual integrity. My respect.
Intellect is very limited. It is at best a heavily processed and filtered, adulterated and denatured distillate from a very limited and biased experience.
But reality is quite a bit larger than that. There is no need to make any assumptions at all where anything unknown remains. These deeply held beliefs certainly do need to be put aside. And that is because a single new fact can unravel eons of opinion and conjecture. But so too can a single piece of information out of context.
All scientific approaches benefit from an open, investigative mind. And Meditation, in particular spiritual meditation, offers a unique laboratory. To use the hidden and undeveloped faculties you have within you to perceived things, to understand things that are not mind and its flawed distillates.
No one should go into meditation to confirm their pre-existing beliefs, but to discover and uncover. Then, there is an unlimited journey, only constrained by attention and time.
Then you can give up all notions, even notions of who you are, not just who God is.
Bulla! I know not who I am
Nor Ami I a believer of the mosque,
Nor am I in rituals of the infidel
Nor am I the pure inside the impure.
Nor am I inherent in the Vedas,
Nor am I present in intoxicants.
Nor am I lost nor the corrupt.
Nor am I union, nor grief,
Nor am I intrinsic in the pure/impure.
Nor am I of water, nor of land.
Nor am I fire nor air.
Bulla! I know not who I am
Nor am I Arabic, nor from Lahore,
Nor am I the Indian city of Nagour.
Nor Hindu or a Turk from Peshawar.
Nor did I create differences of faith,
Nor did I create Adam and Eve
Nor did I name myself.
Beginning or end, I just know the self,
Do not acknowledge duality.
Is anyone wise? How would I know?
Who is this Bulla Shah
Bulla! I know not who I am.
Nor am I moses, nor Pharoah
Nor am I fire nor wind.
I do not stay in Nadaun city. (City of innocents).
Bullah Shah, who is this man standing?
Bulla! I know not who I am.
Bulla! I know not who I am.
Ach ..Spence ,, these are linguistic puzzels .
Every expression that THIS is THAT, has to be reacted to with “That is not true”.
Even saying…You, spence are a human… is not true ..
you are what you are
And Bulleh Shah states that what you are cannot be said.
And that is true for everything that can be NAMED …. language does not and cannot hold knowledge … some coffee makes that clear, no need to be a famous mystic to see it.
But if I would bring these things up in my family they will kick me out … Um get lost with your nonsense..and they are right … I should never have left the path were coffee is just coffee
I do not regret anything from the past but I should never have said to the late MCS, that he was a great psychologist … but that too was balanced by him by asking whether he had to see it as a compliment …. funny al this linguistic magic.
So nothing that exists can be known .. naming it is no knowledge.
What is a house [ or a human body or a personality]?
The materiaal that is used?
The material the material is made of?
The relations between all these building blocks down to the molecular up to the roof the use of the rooms
Looking closely that is all a puzzle, a marvel beyond understanding and yet we can build them and live in them.
and Spence
The last stanzas in the translation of that famous poem that I have at hand it says after saying that he was not residing in Nadaun
I have not solved the mystery of religion
Nor am i a proganey of adam and eve
nor have i a name of my own
i am not among the settled,
nor among the roaming.
I take myself to be the beginning and the end
I do not recognize any one else
There is no one who is wiser that I
O bullah, who is the lord standing there?
O Bullah, what do I know who I am?
hahaha ..It could have been coming from the lips of Shri Nisargadatta.
“It is the spirit of the quest which helps.
I am a slave of this spirit of the quest.”
Kabir
As Said and said again
Poems are just what they are,
mostly not what they look like
let alone how they are translated and presented.
Have a look here:
https://sufipoetry.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/bulleya-ki-jana-main-kaun/
This is more like the light of the full moon
A better translation of the poem would be … I am not known to myself.
Every body that stands behind the window looking outside at the trees and the crows with a cup of coffee in his hand can understand that whatever is said about him or herself is NOT what he is and saying what he or she is beyond what was already said, would add to the confusion, the illusion of knowledge.
I think Bulla is going a little but further. All he knows includes whatever wisdom he sees as supreme. But that isn’t supreme or knowledge. The mind is limited to what it sees and hears. Mind isn’t the whole story. Therefore it is nothing. However you define pure or impure both aren’t the full story. And so, Bulla doesn’t even know who he is. This isn’t just what other people think. It isn’t what we ourselves think. Bulla says this is for himself too. Even he doesn’t know who he is.
Mind isn’t the way to know anything of ultimate truth. But, as Kabir wrote, a sense of quest, the spirit of exploration, the open and attentive spriit of the quest is what he loves best. Me too.
We are all much better students than teachers. And yes, we can all adopt that spirit of the quest, of discovery, the journey to truth.We can be better students.
God is not static
Its all moving all the time
So when is the time to catch it
is the journey of mystics all about
How far one can go is embedded in soul of seeker
what you seek seeks you
God is whatever you want it to be because its an IT . You can interchange the words Nature and Love with God in everything. You wordy people aren’t going to change anything. The only things for sure in the end are death and taxes.
I guess the human problem is that, from birth, we have absorbed the culture, beliefs, and general thought patterns we were subjected to. Brian’s early spiritual journey – and most other people – originates from a background of confusion and uncertainty. From that conglomeration of almost total ignorance, early developing infant brains were, and still are, infused with the idea that we are not complete, that there is something better and grander that we must attain to. Many will settle for becoming rich and famous, yet still, if they admit it, are not satisfied. Practically everyone continues to search in some way.
It is natural to want a better life and more security, but it is evident that such a search produces even more uncertainty and insecurity. So, we scramble to achieve a position where we are rich enough to stay above the melee. For the others, we attempt to console ourselves with one of the many beliefs or spiritual disciplines to assuage our confusion.
Perhaps it is not until we realise that we are simply another specie of animal, that our extended searches, not satisfied with the basics of life, but driven by the dictates of the ego mind, dwells oblivious to the fact that there is nothing to search for, that all such searches arise from the thought or ego dominated search that eventually is seen to be its own self-aggrandizement – we are but puppets to its frantic drive for continuation and imagined permanence.
@ Spence
>> But, as Kabir wrote, a sense of quest, the spirit of exploration, the open and attentive spriit of the quest is what he loves best. Me too<<
Well .. you are right ..with the legs one cannot see, with the eyes one can not think and feel … yet we all have to walk, take action.
Some know where to go and others not and than there those that are just fine where and how they are … like the crow in the tree
@ Ron E.
It is my personal understanding that there is “MY” hand and that the same hand is also “A” hand.
With “my hand” I can do many things and that results in a kind of “knowing” what a hand is … but ….from “A hand” I know nothing at all. Using a thing doesn’t mean that you KNOW what it is
What you wrote can be attribute to the activities of “my hand” .. the consequences of ingesting language and culture and that can be done and is done as many differences ways as there are in “MY hand”
But as “a hand”..what you call “just another specie of animal” we HAVE to act that way …. we are all made to live in a surrounding for our survival … keep a watch full eye on it etc …. and what is taken out of our hands to live NATURALY ..the brain compensates that with .. artificial, abstract ideas about the surroundings and the self …that was Deikman’s argument…. that I expanded.
The question is if, it is possible, once trained as a CULTURAL being, to become NATURAL again and if so, how to act as a NATURAL being in an CULTURAL surrounding.
As far as I understand …animals born and raised in a ZOO cannot be placed in natural surroundings without new training …de- training, de-programming of the CULTURAL
Sometimes I realy are disgusted of the sticky character of language and concepts etc.
Anyway this are my two cents
Brian wrote:
“There is a supernatural realm with God inhabiting it
Science is only able to learn about the material realm
It is possible to know the supernatural realm and God
This is accomplished by not-knowing the material realm in meditation/contemplation
So the knowledge of Science is the ignorance of Spirit, and vice versa”
“”There is a supernatural realm with God inhabiting it”
Hm. Dichotomous thinking to start with. Supernatural realm…Everything we haven’t discovered with instrumentation must include that. And so much of what science has measured once was supernatural. Therefore the second statement is disproven simply by the history of science:
“Science is only able to learn about the material realm”
Logically false. To constrain what is called “the material realm” just to what science currently can measure is to create a realm that was very tiny centuries ago and has expanded exponentially since then. And is showing no signs of every stopping its expansion. Might include everything one day. In short, there might just be one realm.
Here is the only dichotomy, IMHO:
There is only the discovered and the undiscovered, Brian. We can say little about the undiscovered, though many have written throughout the ages of their own experience of discovery.
There is the only dichotomy, and that is created just by what we know and don’t yet know.
What is not real to us might be unreal, might be misunderstood, might be real but undiscovered.
What is unreal to us might just be someone else’s concepts they invented, or hallucinations, or the hallucination of popular beliefs or it might just be a reality science will bring forth in time: just like electricity, magnetic fields, the strong and weak forces, etc..
Arthur Miller: “An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted”
Those could be beliefs about science’s limitations today projected upon the very philosophy of science. Such beliefs quickly are out of date. And they could be beliefs about philosophy, politics or religion. Beliefs about God are just beliefs when others give us their rendition. But the reality of a greater consciousness we can witness for ourselves, might just be a waiting discovery.
Didn’t you also used to believe “All Is One”? I’d stick with that one. I think it has a much much longer shelf-life.
Just like how one can know dreams are real, you can know that the existence of a creator and understand that there is a higher power. Its all about experience.