SCIENCE and SPIRITUALITY MERGE SEAMLESSLY

[OPVerma]

People think science and spirituality are two different subject matter and do not mix with each other. I saw a You tube in which scientists and spiritualists ( including Sad Guru ) were sitting opposite to each other presenting their arguments. All these panelists were masters of their own single subject and were beating their own drums.

For knowing relationship between science and spirituality one must have a vast multidisciplinary knowledge including that of Indian scriptures. For example Indian Scriptures describe the beginning of creation from God in the following way

GOD ( Conscious Photons ) > MAYA ( imagination) > PRADHAN ( thought energy ) > PRAKRITI ( electron proton neutron )
(For Detailed reaction and diagram ref. Nature's Bio-Laws of Action ISBN 9788190950237)

One can very easily see how God a spiritual entity gets transformed seamlessly into the elementary particles of Physics.

[UntoldStories]

This is actually very interesting and something I've been pondering for a long time. I find it fascinating why not more people are talking about this. Honestly, if you want to draw it one step further, one could even say (though I admit it sounds weird) certain religions and science merge "seamlessly."

I'm currently listening to a Swedish podcast by a professor in History of Science and Ideas roughly translated (Idea history basically includes all ideas in history. There, the history of science meets with the history of philosophy, the history of political ideas with the medical history, technology history with the history of mentality.)

He goes through the bible in excruciating detail and tries to get to the core of what it ACTUALLY says which is vastly different from what 99.9% of all people claiming to be Christians actually believe.

The bible is actually very similar to the Vedic scriptures, which in turn is very similar to what science is now discovering. This is beyond fascinating!

Where can one find this book? Seems to be out of stock everywhere.

[taoistscholar_v2]

I think by definition they have to, but dogmas, closed-mindedness, and excessive connotative baggage continue to keep them separate in our society. Our current scientific paradigm still has a difficult time considering spiritual phenomenon beyond that of the sum of its material and measurable parts. But thats not to say that there is no merging taking place at all. We do have scientific fields like psychology, sociology, etcera, which consider the relations and spirit that unites a collection of individual things.

[Altair]

Originally Posted by taoistscholar_v2

I think by definition they have to, but dogmas, closed-mindedness, and excessive connotative baggage continue to keep them separate in our society. Our current scientific paradigm still has a difficult time considering spiritual phenomenon beyond that of the sum of its material and measurable parts.

Please study science carefully and notice why it's that way. Science depends on repeatability and empiricism, and actually contains far less ''baggage'' because parsimony limits the number of assumptions made. People have spiritual experiences and then we may try and match them with a plethora of belief systems. It’s what we do. Science works differently.

Originally Posted by taoistscholar_v2

We do have scientific fields like psychology, sociology, etcera, which consider the relations and spirit that unites a collection of individual things.

Technically those fields are not science, no matter how much statistics they can gather, and they don't mention spirits either. These fields have tried to imitate natural sciences for many decades but eventually, around the 1970s/80s realized that their topics of study deal with uniqueness and subjectivity and not (near) repeatability.

[OPVerma]

Originally Posted by UntoldStories

This is actually very interesting and something I've been pondering for a long time. I find it fascinating why not more people are talking about this. Honestly, if you want to draw it one step further, one could even say (though I admit it sounds weird) certain religions and science merge "seamlessly."

I'm currently listening to a Swedish podcast by a professor in History of Science and Ideas roughly translated (Idea history basically includes all ideas in history. There, the history of science meets with the history of philosophy, the history of political ideas with the medical history, technology history with the history of mentality.)

He goes through the bible in excruciating detail and tries to get to the core of what it ACTUALLY says which is vastly different from what 99.9% of all people claiming to be Christians actually believe.

The bible is actually very similar to the Vedic scriptures, which in turn is very similar to what science is now discovering. This is beyond fascinating!

Where can one find this book? Seems to be out of stock everywhere.

You can search on Google 'All the Knowledge in the Universe' link https://www.facebook.com/knowyouandgod/

[Still_Waters]

For what it's worth, there's a very good book (Quantum Questions, edited by Ken Wilber) which contains the "mystical writings" of some of the world's most famous Nobel-Prize-winning Quantum Physicists, including Schroedinger, Einstein, DeBroglie, Jeans, Eddington, Planck, and others. (Ken Wilber is just the compiler of these writings, not the author.)

It's worth a look. I don't see any significant contradictions between science and pure mysticism though, as Schroedinger points out, scientific instruments are not subtle enough to investigate the subtlest vibrations of creation. He adds that this can only be done via consciousness itself through the process of meditation.

[taoistscholar_v2]

Originally Posted by Altair

Science depends on repeatability and empiricism, and actually contains far less ''baggage'' because parsimony limits the number of assumptions made.

Very correct. But its important to understand that science still persists without empirical data. Not in the sense of producing scientific fact but rather in producing scientific theory. It's always our hope that the scientific method will uncover facts, but very often our hypothesese are only testable with logic and repeatably sound statistics, in turn yielding considerably pragmatic and significant theories.

Just because the empirical data happens to be unidentifiable at a certain point in time, does not make it any less science. The beautiful thing about the scientific method is that it is unattached, unbiased and never-ending. The same goes even when there is an abundance of supporting facts. As Descartes' pointed out and contributed to the scientific method, skepticism realizes that even our senses, or the tools we used to measure the physical world, have the potential to be deceived or fooled. Science is a means not an end. But this is somewhat besides my point.

Regarding this thread, I was wanting to make clear the distinction between science as a method, versus science as an institution or modern community. I think what distinguishes them from one another is that this scientific institution is a lot more pigeonholed, to the point where it has a hard time shifting it's scope away from the buildings of its past, and so as we dive so deep into the established logos, we begin to forget that they are also relative abstracts from the whole. For this reason it is very easy for new paradigms that anatomize the whole in a different way, to easily be cast off as insignificant. This is the dogmatism and close-mindedness I was speaking of. The term 'scientific' these days is often used as synonymous with 'factual', when it's actually a method that is in the pursuit of factual

Originally Posted by Altair

Technically those fields are not science, no matter how much statistics they can gather, and they don't mention spirits either.

Regarding 'spirits' I don't think we are referring to quite the same thing. I was thinking of spirit as being the term used to describe the animating principle(s) of life.. not a superhuman deity of sorts... Although I am aware people create deities all the time to embody and preserve their ideas and experiences, as for personally perceiving deities with my 5 senses, I have no experience whatsoever and so I do not believe in them or have any place in the discussion of this matter.

Originally Posted by Altair

These fields have tried to imitate natural sciences for many decades but eventually, around the 1970s/80s realized that their topics of study deal with uniqueness and subjectivity and not (near) repeatability.

Psychology and Sociology and other fields of these sorts, although they don't deal with deity spirits, they deal with examining an animating principle of life, that might not ever be empirically measured due to the fact that thoughts, relationships, etcetera, are non-physical. For the most part we only see their influence on the physical at this time. This doesn't make them, nor does it make the study of it unscientific. If the findings are unrepeatable, then there is no theory or fact yet established, and so the question can be disregarded or more precisely defined.

[Altair]

Originally Posted by taoistscholar_v2

If the findings are unrepeatable, then there is no theory or fact yet established, and so the question can be disregarded or more precisely defined.

That is what those fields have tried for decades, trying to imitate the natural sciences.. “We just need a new theory”, “Gather more data”, “We just need to be more precise, but we’ll get there eventually!”

But no, they won’t!
Every case is precisely unique in social science and there are simply too many variables involved. Social science (i.e. NOT the humanities that people often confuse it with!) has learned its lessons and usually no longer pretend to be “doing science” in the strict sense of the word!

[taoistscholar_v2]

Originally Posted by Altair

Every case is precisely unique in social science and there are simply too many variables involved. Social science (i.e. NOT the humanities that people often confuse it with!) has learned its lessons and usually no longer pretend to be “doing science” in the strict sense of the word!

I think that is a very easy belief to adopt.. I like it a lot too, but I can't help but recognize that we happen to find new patterns all the time in the social sciences that provide new insight into these matters. For example character/personality traits that show an increased prevalence of specific physiological disease, or societal trends that are linked to common outcomes historically. Yes they are not certain, and repeatable when it comes to specifics, each case is precisely unique, but I think the same goes for physical phenomenon. I've heard that as we zoom in on matter at a subatomic level, we see the laws of Newtonian mechanics begin to breakdown and display exceptions with this such precision. Physically we can discern differences in things (e.g. no one skin cell is exactly the same) yet we can still address trends and commonalities between such taxonomical groupings. I think you're very right though in saying its much easier to do science within the physical/'natural' scope.