The Limits Of My Everyday Secret

Recently read a post about some struggling with a unification of spirituality and science so some extended thought: “Unification,“ or at least an understanding of how spirituality (distinct here from religion) and science can complement each other requires some “meta-thinking.” What the term means in this context is some ”higher level” (additional, not better) analysis of how each of these as disciplines is constructed and defined by the mind and the cultural context in which it exists.* Most people think that proper science reveals facts that stand alone as “objective truth” about reality when in fact these “facts” are “truth” as it is defined by the “instruments“ used to discover them (eyes, telescopes, microscopes, Hadron Colliders, experimental technology), the social construct of science defined by the training that defines who is a scientist, those scientists using those technologies of investigation and the “scientific method” in which investigation is embedded. Today that all combines to provide the undertaking with legitimacy even as it has been recently attacked by the methods of traditional religion (faith) and the contemporary right-wing politics that abets “religional” thought. Vetted science (Repeatable and peer-reviewed independently) becomes a generally accepted, reliable source of accepted “truth” in Western culture. It waits to be replaced as new information strengthens, amplifies or disproves what is current. For quite some time any kind of meta-thought (thinking about how thinking works) was not conducted (perhaps not permitted) which lead to conflict between science and religion as religion was “truth” by way of faith in beliefs proclaimed by “experts” granted that distinction by a politics that lead to a male-dominated, often misogynistic or at least chauvinistic, religious hierarchy. Science as we understand today was almost nonexistent. In the last hundred years, as scientific technology, “empirical scientific truth,” and advancing technology in general kept accelerating, religion has been fighting a rearguard action to defend conclusions based on the long standing and unchanging nature of its faith-based methods. It’s co-traveler in the form of Right-wing politics has chosen a frontal assault co-opting traditional religion. “Modern spirituality” (“modern” meaning “here in the West”) provides a third context of methods and social constructs that suggest using the technology of “mindful meditation” (you may fill in the spaces; they are placeholders) and it’s associated Eastern constructs to say that a properly trained mind is a reliable instrument for investigating reality without the technological paraphernalia or social constructs that define science, i.e. the results are likely to be different, not necessarily contradictory of science, but as legitimately alternative or additional, just come to by a different means. The control exerted by central authority “experts” is softened and in the background with one’s own mind as foreground. Leaders see themselves as teachers, not as monarchs, popes, bishops, party leaders, presidents, or prime ministers with partial or absolute authority over the ultimate “truths” that an individual discovers on the spiritual path to enlightenment. Some will argue that the popularity of “being spiritual” today is not religion; some will say it is thinly disguised substitute for religion that is anachronistically rigid to the point of irrelevance. Lately science has taken to analyzing “spirituality,” Eastern techniques of mindful investigation and some of the “results,” in a way that has provided more “legitimacy” than is given to traditional Western, Abrahamic religions. This popularity may be enhanced by a perceived hypocrisy: despite what they profess as a non-violent approach, traditional Western religions often support cultures that depend on some sense of aggression, war and warfare to maintain their integrity. Recent events in Myanmar notwithstanding, Buddhism is viewed as a genuine alternative to aggression and a legitimate way of turning away from the

tradition of Western theologies without losing feelings associated with one’s spiritual sense when confronting the mystery being here. It accepts mystery as something inevitable regardless of what is “discovered.” Science sees mystery as an invitation to pursue its sort of investigation of mystery to further reductive “scientific truth.”

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