Chapter 5 (Science and Mysticism)

This chapter expands on the discussion of epistemology begun in Chapter 2 focusing on science and mysticism. First it is perhaps worth restating the epistemological problem. We live in a world that can be partially appreciated through our five senses of touch, vision, hearing, smell and taste. We take that sense information and using the reasoning powers in the mind construct conceptual models for how the world works. This allows us to understand the world at some level and make predictions that are useful for survival in that world. Among sense information, I am going to include information that comes to us through instruments or other sorts of experimental means used in scientific observation which allows us to extend our information about objects that are part of the physical world but that we cannot directly experience with our bodies five senses. Through vision and hearing we acquire conceptual information from the experience and reasoning of others that can be incorporated into our own world views.

There are philosophers in both west and east who have challenged the view that we can rely on our sensory experiences. These philosophers make persuasive arguments that at a logical level are hard to refute if you accept their assumptions. However, once one rejects the view that our sense perceptions can be trusted to mean anything, there is not much of a place to go. If one can’t trust the information arriving through our senses, then what can we trust? You’re at a dead end with it hard to make much progress. You can turn inward to the mind but why should our inner thoughts and perceptions be more trustworthy? These views seem worth returning to in a latter chapter, but for now I’m going to accept that we can trust the information that comes to us through the senses to mean something which can inform us about the world.

However, on the spiritual journey we are connecting where we are now to a non-physical realm that is beyond ordinary sensory experience. Non-physical here meaning made of some substance of which we currently cannot detect. Since this realm is beyond the sense realm, we cannot appreciate it through sense experience or understand it simply by thinking about it, i.e. by reason. Access to this realm comes not through systematic empirical observation (i.e. science) but rather through mystical experience.

Philosophy and metaphysics

Before turning to science and mysticism, it is probably worth a few words about philosophy and metaphysics. I realize that in these chapters, I frequently state definitions of words, some which are already probably well known to the reader. I do this not with the intent of being annoying but because I think we often use words without having a concise knowledge of what the words mean. I find myself often using words that when I think about them, I don’t have an exact grasp in my own mind what the words mean. Words in common usage may also have different meanings in different contexts. I will frequently start with a modern dictionary definition of a word, to indicate its common usage and the range of meanings it may have and then indicate what I intend it to mean here.

Let’s start with definitions of philosophy and metaphysics. Philosophy comes from a Greek word meaning love of wisdom. It may be defined in the most general sense as the rationale pursuit of truth. Philosophy seeks to provide answers to eternal questions like the nature of being, how do we know what we know, what is good and what is beautiful. Its subdivisions include ontology and epistemology which have already been defined in other chapters as well as ethics (the study of what is good and how we should behave) and esthetics (what is beautiful and why).

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy whose definition in a dictionary usually includes it as dealing with the fundamental nature of reality including the nature of existence and being, phrases that sound a bit vague. For purposes here, metaphysics is about understanding the nature and relationship of this world that can be appreciated with the senses to that realm beyond the senses whether thought of as being a God, gods, a presence, or force. One may also understand metaphysics as seeing the world the way it is in the broadest sense, one of the principles of Chapter 4.

Metaphysics vs. physics

Science is a dominant force in western culture. Science is probably the most unique feature of what can be called the western intellectual tradition. Mathematics was well developed in India and the Islamic world before the cultures in Europe. India was where our modern numeral system was first created. They are called Arabic numerals in the west but Islamic culture got them from India and transmitted them to the west. Eastern cultures were also advanced technologically, think of the development of gun powder, the compass, paper and printing in China long before their development in the west. However, what became special about science in the west was its development as an empirical method based on experimentation or observation and its separation from religion. In the east this separation would only occur later. Knowledge was just knowledge and the notion of separating knowledge according to how it was derived didn’t take hold the way it would in the west.

How does metaphysics differ from physics? Physics is an experimental science. It is based on observations, either the results of experiments that can be performed in the lab or observations made in nature on earth or in the skies. In principle, someone else should be able to do the same experiment and obtain the same results. If two labs conduct the same experiments but get different results, we consider the results untrustworthy. Scientists take sound reproducible results and try to fit them into models called theories. Here we should say that in science a theory is not usually an hypothesis or a guess. Rather theory most commonly refers to an explanation of some natural phenomenon that has been repeatedly confirmed by experiment or observation and is widely accepted e.g. Einstein’s general theory of relativity as an explanation for gravity. Theory is also however, sometimes used to refer to well thought out explanations for natural phenomenon even though they have not been tested, e.g. string theory. Of course, even established theories may need to be abandoned or revised or new ones constructed as new data becomes available. Science is self-correcting and is never final.

It may take time for experiment to confirm theory. Think for example of the Higgs Boson whose existence was predicted based on theory in 1964 but not shown to exist experimentally until 2012 after building of the Large Hadron Collider which could generate the high energy particle collisions needed to detect the Higgs Boson. Two other modern areas of research in physics are dark matter and dark energy which together are believed to account for 96% of the energy in the universe. Dark matter was invoked to explain why the galaxies rotate as they do. Dark energy which accounts for 73% of the energy in the universe was only “discovered” in 1998 and its existence inferred to explain why universe’s expansion continues to accelerate rather than decelerate.

The basis for why dark matter and dark energy should exist seems compelling based on observations but the physical basis for what they are remains unknown. Particles known as WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) have been postulated to underlie dark matter, but none have yet been experimentally detected. The underlying basis for what dark energy is and how it exerts its effects is even more mysterious. There may also be areas of physics where the experimental means may never exist to confirm theory. Some physicists think that string theory which posits that the fundamental building blocks of nature are vibrating strings rather than point particles is beyond the realm of experimental confirmation because of the high energy nature of the vibrating strings postulated. One can reasonably ask if a theory can never be confirmed by experiment is it science or does it belong to the world of metaphysics?

Metaphysics differs from physics and science in general in that in metaphysics one is allowed to utilize any information gained from science but is not limited to facts verified by experiment or observation. One may use theories at whatever stage of development they may be and combine them with inductive reasoning and the results of mystical knowledge described below. Over time problems can move from philosophy or metaphysics to science. In one sense historically philosophy can be seen as dealing with intractable problems. Once problems become tractable, they become science. What Galileo and Newton did was considered natural philosophy in their time. However, once the study of motion became quantitative and subject to experiment, it moved out of the realm of natural philosophy and became the study of mechanics within physics. A similar phenomenon can be seen in the development of biology. What began as the natural philosophy of Aristotle became biology. Historically philosophers have tended to feel that what science has done over time is to peel off the easy problems and leave the hard ones behind to philosophers.

Mysticism

Mystical experience is a second source of knowledge on the spiritual journey. However, mysticism is a term that can have various meanings. The Merriam Webster online dictionary (https://www.merriam-webster.com) defines it as being 1) the experience of mystical union or direct communion with ultimate reality reported by mystics; 2) the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth, or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience (such as intuition or insight) or 3a) vague speculation: a belief without sound basis 3b) a theory postulating the possibility of direct and intuitive acquisition of ineffable knowledge or power., ineffable here meaning, that which cannot be expressed in human language.

The use of mysticism as a pejorative to reflect delusion, irrational or non-scientific thinking, “oh that’s just mysticism” need not concern us here. It may be useful to comment on what mysticism is not. Mysticism is not a specific body of knowledge or a branch of philosophy. It is not based on scientific observation or experiment. Using deductive reasoning based upon accepted assumptions or axioms to arrive at a conclusion is not mysticism. Rather mysticism involves a transformation of the individual that is not based just on objective reasoning. It involves gaining knowledge about or making contact directly with that higher reality. To put it in the terms of chapters 2 and 3 mysticism is about movement of the spiritual consciousness towards the source.

Different authors have various views on what should be called mysticism. I’m going to suggest several subtypes of mysticism as they could be called, but they are probably more like dimensions. Some of these I admit can be seen as overlapping and some authors might not even consider some of these strands as mysticism at all:

1)    Mystical prophecy. Mystical knowledge may be given to a prophet through a direct communication, often from a specific God. This communication may involve visions or auditory experience. The prophet then communicates this knowledge to other people. Here the prophet serves as a mediator. This type of mysticism would be typical of the prophets such as Moses and Mohammad.

2)    Meditative experience. Mystical knowledge may be acquired with the aid of meditation. For example, the sages of the Upanishads and the Buddha used meditative experience to see a reality not visible to the five senses. Meditation here meaning the act of concentrating the mind on a single focus and the subsequent effects that result. These sages then believed that through their teachings they could train students to see this reality for themselves. Meditative experience thus involves a more investigative approach. Meditation may also be used to promote insights naturally arising outside of the mediation experience itself. This latter practice is common in Buddhism.

3)     Mystical prayer or reading of scripture. Here I am thinking of the type of mysticism found in traditional Jewish Kabballah or of some of the medieval Christian mystics. Prayer in a general sense always has a mystical element since it is directed to a higher source. However, here the intent is to activate a connection to that higher realm. One starts from a divinely inspired text such as the Torah. The act of reading or studying the text invites a divine presence to enter, e.g. the Shekinah as it is called in Judaism which is present when the Torah is studied. Christian mystics would use prayer as a mechanism to through Jesus activate that connection. This connection facilitates a better understanding of the words in the text and/or a connection to the higher source. The notion being that when you read the bible or other sacred text you are experiencing God in the world.

4)    Unitive experience. In this strand of mysticism, the soul of the individual goes outside of itself and passes over towards usually a specific God. I distinguish this from #3 because the goal is not acquiring specific knowledge per say but rather to become unified with that reality or God. Prayer or reading of scripture may be used to facilitate this process. Thus, it is not wholly different from #3.

5)    Intellectual vision. Here I am thinking of Plato’s notion of intellectual vision which involves seeing with the mind’s eye not the body’s eye. It doesn’t involve prayer or reading divine scripture. It is not a vision from a God. Although the ancient Greeks believed in a plethora of gods, these gods do not seem to have played much of a role in the thinking of figures like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Plato clearly distinguishes intellectual vision from simple reasoning. How these intellectual visions came about is not clear. Socrates reported being guided by an oracle and there are stories that when Socrates was trying to solve a difficult problem, he would stand in fixed positions sometimes all day and all night even in the snow (see Bertrand Russell, History of Western Civilization, Chapter 11, 1945, Simon and Schuster or Chase, Did Socrates Mediate? Religions 13: 479. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13060479.). What exactly these states were is not clear. Although Plato describes some of the practices of Socrates, I can find very little about any meditation practices of Plato. It would be interesting to know more. The following problem-solving algorithm has been attributed to the physicist Richard Feynman: write down the problem, think very hard, write down the answer. That approach may have worked for Richard Feynman, but it probably doesn’t work that well for most of the rest of us. But it brings up the question of what is one is doing when you think very hard? Is this discursive problem solving where the mind moves from one idea to another, examining different aspects of a problem, and trying to link ideas together using a logical process. Or is it more a process of pure concentration leading to intellectual vision, what Socrates did when he was standing in the snow?

6)    Mystical training exercises. As noted above the sages of the Hindu Upanishads thought that they could train students to follow their path. In many traditions this takes the form of specific prayers or practices that move one closer to source. A spiritual guide in the form of a teacher, a guru, a master often serves as a mediator. In some such traditions such as Zen Buddhism, a direct transmission from a teacher to a student is necessary. You can’t go out and discover it on your own. In some traditions such as Sufism or Tibetan Buddhism, these programs may involve years of sequential practices that build towards the goal of seeing the truth or becoming united with the source. The information imparted to the student may be in the form of knowledge, experience or a combination of both.

7)    Mystery cults or societies. Another aspect related to the culture of mysticism is mystery cults. Mysticism is frequently associated with secret societies that possess mystical information that may have been obtained through whatever means and which is only shared after one becomes a member of the society. Many religious and even secular societies require initiation into the society before certain truths are revealed. Examples exist in both east and west.

8)    Mystical mindset. An aspect of mysticism may also be seen in what can be called the mystical attitude or mindset. The mystic can find mysticism anywhere. It doesn’t need to be in the study of a difficult to understand text. It can be in the reading of a simple story or reading a simple prayer.

Explanations for mystical prophetic experiences

We might as well confront what are possible explanations for mystical experiences? Let’s take the most extreme, which is probably mystical prophecy. I can only see four explanations.

1)    Accept them at face value. They are what they seem to be a communication from a higher source.

2)    They are visual or auditory hallucinations. They are perceived as being real by the one experiencing them. However, they are not derived from a higher source but rather created in the mind through some perhaps pathological mechanism.

3)    They represent a dream experience. They are created in the mind and not the result of a communication from some higher source. They are not pathological in terms of being an hallucination but are the result of dream experience that is misinterpreted. Leigh Brasington in his book Right Concentration (Chapter 20, Shambhala, 2015) makes an interesting suggestion that the supranormal powers experienced by Buddhist monks may be a type of lucid dream facilitated by their type of meditative practice.

4)    They are hoxes propagated by someone who wants to become famous as a prophet or at least embellishments which a tradition has added to the story of a founder to give the story more supernatural credence.

There are probably examples in mystical traditions of all of these. However, I am not ready to dismiss #1 as representing at least some of them.

The separation of religion and science in the west

As noted above, in the east theology and science separated later than in the west. In the east, knowledge was just knowledge and there was no utility seen in separating knowledge according to how it was derived. In the west, how knowledge was acquired would become critical in a way that would put religion into conflict with science.

In the west this separation would take place during the 16th to 17 centuries. But to understand this transformation, one must first take a step back and look at what was there before. European universities in the middle-ages were dominated by the church. Indeed, the main purpose of universities from was to train clergy. Scholasticism was the prominent school of philosophy. Scholasticism in its approach to knowledge emphasized dialectical reasoning. A topic was selected on which different positions were possible. A dialogue followed in which different points and counterpoints were developed. A rigorous discussion followed through which, inferences could be drawn, and contradictions resolved.

Source material for Christian scholastics was the Bible and Greek philosophy. Whenever contradictions might arise the Bible which was in its final form and not subject to revision was ultimate authority. Reason was seen as facilitating the dialectical process and not in opposition to theology. Reason was sometimes referred to as the handmaiden of theology and would lead one to see the rationality of faith. Medieval scholastics using this approach, were able to combine classical Greek philosophy with Christian theology into a comfortable union. However, it was a process that looked to ancient authority and took place within the mind of the scholastic. It did not go out and study nature itself. Since it relayed on biblical revelation, it was mysticism.

At the 17th century began, Aristotelian scholastics dominated European universities They endorsed a cosmology developed by the Greek philosopher Ptolemy with the earth at the center of the universe and the moon, planets, sun, and stars, rotating around the earth in perfect circular orbits which were expected of heavenly bodies. The Sublunar realm below the moon was the world of change. Nothing was permanent. Elements mixed, broke down and then reformed. Above the moon was the realm of God, the celestial heaven in which things were perfect and permanent. The earth was not in truth given a privileged place in this cosmology since it was considered as being the farthest from the heavens and the goal was to move from the always changing earth to the heavens closer to God.

By the end of the 18th century this model would be overturned through the work of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. I realize that many readers may be familiar with this history, but I summarize it below to emphasize that these were figures who to one degree or another were still working at the border of mysticism and science.

Copernicus (1473-1543) first proposed a heliocentric model with the sun as the center of the solar system and the planets including earth rotating around them. He seems to have done this in part based on astronomical observations some of them his own which suggested that the geocentric model didn’t fit the data. However, he also seems to have been motivated by the logic that a system with the planets orbiting at a steady rate around the sun seemed simpler to explain what was known about planetary motion at the time. Whatever his motivation, at the time that he proposed it, his model was a leap of faith without the evidence to support it. He also assumed that heavenly objects must move in circular orbits which created a model that didn’t fit the data any better than a model with the earth at the center.

Kepler (1571-1630) adopted the heliocentric view of Copernicus. Kepler himself had strong mystical inclinations and lived at time when there was still no clear separation between the disciplines of astronomy and astrology. He was mathematician and seems to have sympathized with the neo-Pythagorians in their mystical belief that the universe was organized according to numbers and that a creator God expressed his plan in numbers. Kepler’s opportunity was that he had access to the careful data on the rotations of the planets collected by Tyco Brahe. Using a brute force approach combining algebra and geometry he was able to derive three laws that described the rotations of the planets. However, his first law that the planets traveled in elliptical orbits rather than circles bothered him so much that he was unwilling to accept it. After 10 more years he had discovered his third law that the squares of the orbital periods of the planets were directly proportional to the cubes of the semi-major axes of their orbits. This law had enough beauty to it, that he thought it to be worthy of a divine mind and thus Kepler was able to tolerate ellipses. Kepler spoke of this third law as being proper home for God and that it reflected harmony of the world. He even spoke that upon discovering it he let himself go into a divine rage. Kepler used a modern scientific approach but limited the conclusions that he was willing to accept based on his own mystical beliefs.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was a contemporary of Kepler and one of the first to become aware of Kepler’s work. Galileo adopted the heliocentric view but wasn’t sure about Kepler’s laws themselves which he thought were a bit too speculative. Like Kepler, Galileo was a mathematician and thought that the laws of nature are written in the language of mathematics. However, his was not a mystical mathematics. It was not that there were mystical mathematic formulas or numbers but rather it was a matter of finding the right mathematics that described the natural phenomenon.

Galileo was no mystic. He thought that natural philosophy had to look outward and not to books of the past or previous authorities. Facts are determined by nature, not by men. He believed that observation and experiment combined with inductive reasoning and mathematical models was the path to knowledge of the natural world. These views would bring him into conflict with the Aristotelian scholastics who dominated academic society of his time. Galileo would argue that if Aristotle had been alive in his time, Aristotle would have agreed with him, and he almost certainly would have. Aristotle’s whole natural philosophy was based on observation of the world. In the famous painting of Plato’s academy by Raphael, Plato and Aristotle are seen walking side by side among a group of students. Plato is pointing to the heavens saying the answer is up there while Aristotle is pointing straight ahead, saying no Plato the answer is right here. Look in front of you.

The church authorities ordered Galileo to write a book comparing Ptolemy and Copernicus system instructing him to conclude that the issues were too complex to be sorted out except by the divine wisdom of the church, which endorsed Ptolemy. Galileo wrote such a book but his insincerity in his conclusions was clear. Galileo lost the battle with the church of his time but has forever been remembered as one of the first modern scientists.

Isaac Newton (1643-1727) completes the story of the planetary orbits in the 17th century. Newton is another curious figure who besides being a mathematician and physicist (natural philosopher in his time) had very strong mystical tendencies. He was a devout Christian. He believed the world was created by a single God and there would be an end of time about which he made predictions. He wrote commentaries on biblical prophecy and had views on the Christian trinity that would have been considered heretical had they been known during his lifetime. Newton also had a strong interest in alchemy, interests that had their roots not just in an interest in early chemistry but also it seems in mysticism.

Other astronomers including Edmund Haley had been thinking about the idea of a force between objects governed by an inverse square law but found the mathematics daunting. Haley was aware that Newton had been working on such ideas and approached him. Haley asked Newton if the orbits of planets were driven by a force obeying an inverse square law what would the orbits look like? Newton answered that they would be ellipses. Haley asked Newton how he knew that, and Newton answered that he had calculated it.

In fact, Newton had taken his universal law of gravitation and using calculus which he had to invent, was able to derive Kepler’s laws including predicting the elliptical orbits of the planets. While Kepler’s laws described the paths that the planets took in orbiting the sun, they provided no understanding of why. By showing that the motions of the planets around the sun could be seen as due to the force of gravity, Newton was able to unify the why of planetary motion with why apples fall to ground and the tides come and go as they do on earth. This was a great unification moment in western science and created more generally a confidence that the human mind can understand the world around us.

The question is sometimes asked who was the greatest scientist? The answer to some extent depends on how one defines “greatness.” Greatness in science also depends on luck. Who is in the right place at the right time. No doubt, chance does favor the prepared mind but there is something to said for it being better to be lucky than good. In judging modern science, we also often talk of impact. How much impact would a line of research have in changing practice or influencing thinking in other areas. I think if you ask the question this way what scientist has had the greatest impact, the answer is easy. It was Isaac Newton. In fact, it is hard to overestimate Newton’s influence. Newton’s Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica had an impact even on those who couldn’t understand the mathematics which was most. Beyond, an understanding of motion on earth and in the heavens, Newton served as a model of how the human mind could understand the physical world. Newton’s accomplishments would be a source of inspiration to the enlightenment philosophy.

Newton’s explanations would, however, not be the end of the story. Problems including anomalies in the orbit of Mercury and the problem of instantaneous action over distance would only be resolved by Einstein’s theory of general relativity which serves as the model of how gravity is understood today. Such is the story of science. No matter how great a theory may be at the time it is proposed, it may be subject to being undermined by later data.

The separation of science and religion

Newton represents a figure who clearly was a part of both a mystical tradition and the new science. In 1936 the economist John Maynard Keynes purchased a group of Newton’s papers known as the Portsmouth papers. After studying them he wrote that “Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians” (https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Keynes_Newton/ accessed January 11, 2023). Yet, Newton seems to have kept these strands separate. He did not insist on his mystical tendencies dictating what science could discover. Newton believed that there was a God who created the world. He believed that we could discover laws about the rules that govern nature, but we couldn’t know why God had chosen those rules or set the constants that govern nature. Although part of Newton may have been a magician at heart, another part had the modern scientific outlook of a Galileo. In Newton’s writing he kept those two apart.

The transformation of viewpoints in the 16th and 17th century was not taking place only in scientific circles. Philosophers like Francis Bacon (1561-1626) argued that universities had mixed religion and natural philosophy in ways that were not productive. They had allowed religion to be a source of knowledge of the natural world, knowledge which it couldn’t provide. Bacon argued for a separation of natural philosophy from theology. It was not the role of theology to address questions of the natural world like the rotation of the planets and it was also not the role of science to go into matters of theology.

Of course, one could take that next step and argue if science is subject to an objective standard, why shouldn’t theology be subjected to the same standard. Some philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) would take that step arguing that Biblical stories were historically unverifiable or scientifically impossible. At this point science and reason were not any more the handmaidens of theology. Science and reason were competitors. I’m sure there are many working scientists who have strong religious beliefs today, but they keep them separate from their work as scientists and these issues have largely moved out of the public domain. Arguments over creationism in the mid 20th century in the United States could be seen as an exception but now science and religion largely stay in their own domains. If your goal is to go to heaven you study scripture. If your goal is to understand the motion of the planets, you study how the planets move.

Is science useful on the spiritual journey?

By its dependence on linkage to experiment or observation, science has an objectivity that is appealing. Science also has an objectivity in not being observer dependent. In principle anyone with the right tools can go out and confirm an observation or reproduce and experiment. Science is also self-correcting, in that mistakes can be corrected by subsequent experiment. However, reasoning in science is inductive and its theories are always tentative and subject to revision. Theories in science also at some levels always reduce to what philosophers like to call brute facts. Why is the mass to charge ratio of an electron the number that it is? Why is the acceleration of an object near earth’s surface 9.8 m/s2? In both cases, it just is and even if some clever graduate student comes up with an explanation that new theory will invariably reduce to some other set of brute facts. Another problem with science is that it is bound to the physical world that we can appreciate with the senses. Think again of Raphael’s painting of Plato’s academy. Science sees the world that Aristotle is pointing to in front of him. Whereas the spiritual journey is about connecting to the realm that Plato is pointing to in the sky.

At this point science can say a lot about the physical body and even properties of the mind but can say little about the spiritual consciousness or the source (chapters 3 and 4) that we currently consider as being non-physical. Perhaps this situation will not always remain this way? Think for example in the early 19th century the technology didn’t exist to detect radioactive particles or the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our conceptualization of the physical world changed radically once these were known. Consider further the stories of dark matter and dark energy which together constitute 96% of the energy in the universe. Dark energy which accounts for a whopping 73% was not “discovered” until the late 1990s and dark matter was only predicted to exist in the 1970s. Neither are understood in terms of how they operate. In this context it is worth commenting that even though gravity was the first force to be understood in a decent quantitative way, how gravity exerts its effects is still not well understood. Although particles called gravitons have been postulated to be how it exerts its effects, no such particles have been clearly shown to exist.

In a medical context consider how long epilepsy was believed to be due to demonic possession , an explanation in the realm of mysticism. However, once epilepsy was discovered to be associated with abnormal electrical activity of the brain, it left the world of mystical explanation and moved into the physical world. One might argue that the abnormal electrical activity is caused by a demon. However, based on what is now known about brain activity and the physical lesions that can cause epilepsy it seems much more reasonable to explain epilepsy on the basis of physical mechanisms found in this world without the need to invoke demons.

One might argue that a spiritual consciousness and a source exist because they must exist just as dark matter and dark energy must exist. Perhaps if one day we can detect the spiritual consciousness or the source with an instrument our conceptualization of how we relate to that greater realm will change entirely. Such a radical change amounting to being able to detect God would demystify what is currently considered mystical.

Is mysticism the answer on the spiritual journey?

We don’t have a device that can detect the spiritual consciousness or the source. We are therefore operating in a realm that takes us beyond science into mysticism. While one might take the attitude let’s set this problem aside until science figures it out, I think most of us don’t want to wait that long (and it may never happen anyway). We want answers now and feel those answers should be definitive. Relative answers that may need to be revised by future experiments are not good enough on the spiritual journey.

Thus, we are stuck dealing with mysticism. Mystical experience offers a source of information as well as the opportunity for the individual to connect directly to the source. Mysticism has an appeal in that its answers are final and definite as well as not subject to error or doubt. However, mystical knowledge comes from an individual experience and since not everyone reports the same mystical experiences, can we trust them? Mystical insights when they involve knowledge arrive as trains of thought rather than systemic argument.

Mystical approaches also vary. Consider the introspective meditative approach where the goal is to quiet the mind and shut thought down vs. the emotive, ecstatic approach where the goal is to bring about union with the divine. How much trust should one put in an ecstatic experience that takes place in highly charged state of the mind with often a strong emotional component? Mystical experiences often involve the heart and the mind.

In science, in principle, someone else should be able to repeat your experiment and obtain the same results. Many traditions believe that a skilled teacher who has experienced the path can point a student towards following the same path. However, that is not quite the same as how we think of replication in science. The teacher is always suggesting an outcome and there is an element of faith in the teacher that is not found in science. There may also be an intense personal connection with the teacher. A frequent notion found in mysticism is also that you must have the experience to understand the experience, which is very different from science. A central assumption of much mystical thought is that the source is unknowable in human terms. Thus, it can never be described adequately as long as we inhabit the human realm.

For the present, we are caught in between. There is no reason not to accept the findings of science as long as they are helpful and the Dalai Lama has said “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.” I’m not sure how many Buddhists really accept that idea and the Dali Lama has also said “but scientists, on their own cannot prove nirvana.” At present the Dali Lama is right.