The Duality of Science and Spirituality: A case for Non-dualism
Dean Radin PhD, 2013 Supernormal photo.
“So all fledgling scientists learn to maintain a serious, sober demeanor at all times, even if they’re secretly wearing Spider-Man underwear.”
A bright-eyed naive youth in her prime once believed that she could one day learn, apply and help the public by studying the vast intricacies of darkness in the mind and how the intermingling of environmental and cultural nurture played a part in the health or detriment of biological functioning in the human brain.
As life would have it though, the path wasn’t linear nor smooth. A sobering reality hit as an everyday working bench chemist pushing numbers and figures but thankful she could finally work in a scientific job during the time of an economic recession.
You see, I was struggling to pay back student loans, employed since I was old enough to drive. Having worked full time during my college years, I knew what it meant to grind and work my way up for that potential opportunity or at least a more comfortable way of living in whatever industry would have me. I jumped at the opportunity to finally be in an industry at least within the realm of hard sciences.
My plan was to work and pay down the student loans while I truly figured out what I wanted to study further before moving on to a Masters or PhD. Yet, year after year, slowly getting myself out of a lot of credit card debt, the amount to borrow to get to where I thought I wanted to be, continued to climb astronomically with the same empty promises of opportunity and respect from society that it would be worth the investment.
I was dutifully employed and from the outside looking in- doing pretty well considering my peers who could barely find employment after graduating (many of whom decided to keep on the education grind). In came my introduction to spirituality through the lens of yoga. I had some excess income and the ability to live a comfortable life on my own, but not without the shadow of a hefty student loan debt, and in a decent career, albeit not the one I had anticipated I would be in.
Growing up with Buddhist principles and of Southeast Asian descent, Eastern spirituality was not new to me, but, the Yogic way was indeed a shiny, new, philosophy and way of life that I hadn’t previously encountered. Many principles and philosophies were similar to my upbringing and as I went down the rabbit hole, I saw historically they came from a similar background, but arguably from differing sources that academia cannot fully agree upon.
So, as both academia and science tend to do, we separate the similar from the dissimilar into little boxes with other contexts and simply agree to disagree.
As we have it now, so many of these varying life paths, philosophies, ways of living, religions, organizations are nothing more than these separations of similar from dissimilar into little boxes with other contexts that either agree or disagree with the others. This appears to be the way of the world and how it is organized from the human mind. The microcosm of individual human experience breaks things up and separates in order to make sense of them. That is how our brains work, how we function as human beings. As a species, it has gotten us very far. Some argue, it has also been tremendously limiting to the human potential.
This microcosm of the individual becomes part of a larger microcosm of a like-minded group of individuals- further distinguishing between one similar box versus another slightly dissimilar box. It is like the discerning between the geometry of a square, a trapezoid, a rhombus and a rectangle- as a whole they are similar thus get contextualized into one box. However, they are massively dissimilar from the geometry of a circle’s or an oval’s grouping into another, and as human beings, we wouldn’t disagree with that sentiment.
We see the duality in things, the opposites in things. So, it makes sense that there is an insurmountable dissimilarity between the larger contextual boxes of Science (materialism/external) and Spirituality (spirit/internal). To simplify the terms, I am lumping differing philosophies of creation and consciousness into the larger Spirituality box. Yes, I know, there are many dissimilar boxes that would not agree to be defined within the larger context of the Spirituality box, but, for the context of this post, it is simply to highlight the difference between the hard study of nature (materialism) with empirical evidence versus the study of that which cannot be seen (spirit) internally with historical anecdotal evidence dating back before the existence of Science.
The reason I highlight my background at the beginning of this post is to show my decade of direct work experience in the Science box as well as my prior years of hard education also within the Science box. While this doesn’t account for devoting a lifetime to the deeper study of Science, it does however, give some credibility to my understanding of said box’s contents.
My experience within the hard Sciences is not longer than my direct experiences of Spirituality. However, the coloring of my experience within the hard Sciences has now bled into the coloring of my direct experiences of a Spiritual nature. This can be said of also your direct experiences of study in life, coloring your direct experiences of whatever box you define bleeding into the larger loosely defined Spirituality box.
That saying, “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” can be likened to a differing view of quantum mechanics by that of Schrodinger’s cat. Two different boxes, yet similar questions in regards to philosophy of a broader paradoxical observation on the perception of reality.
The science box would dissect all factual elements of nature and study those elements of nature in a succinct method, find correlations, drop non correlations and come to a verifiable conclusion that said tree did or did not fall and then did or did not make a sound. Science would be open to disagreement if it was later questioned to be incorrect in it’s initial decision so long as it can be exactly re-verified within the context of the scientific method.
The spirituality box would not claim fact that it made a sound or not, but how did the tree come into existence in the first place and with such claims, allow the direct experience of the individual or the individual’s group box to decide whether the tree did indeed fall. Spiritual and religious groups would more often than not, be closed to entertaining disagreement if it was later questioned to be incorrect because one’s direct experience and belief is the only verification that you can attest to.
The science box dissects Schrodinger’s cat into quantum mechanics and allows the contradiction to occur. The spirituality box dissects Schrodinger’s cat into what I believe is a non conversation about it at all. This play on opposites, this duality, has many in the science and spiritual realms at continual odds with one another.
In my personal study with both, I see the seeping of these individual truths melding into larger truths and scaling up into community divide, state divide, country divide, disagreements in policies and worldview. You get me?
It is this very duality within all aspects of living a human experience that I believe to be the culprit of so much discord in all avenues of societal life. To me, all the messiness in between is merely the observance of our experience of duality. The very nature of separating those boxes to better understand them hinders our ability to see beyond them. We can keep separating and discerning the larger into the smaller in an attempt to qualify/quantify until finally, there is nothing left to differentiate. At some point, it all merges and becomes more or less of the same thread.
“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.”
Upon further contemplation, if we are all of the same thread- a common teaching among many different religions and belief systems, why must we undergo so much discord for one another merely to define the blurred lines of your views versus mine?
As many in the Spiritual community would say, it is because we have forgotten who we truly are and where we truly come from. It is duality at play. The nature of the living human experience that is unique to our existence and the very reason why we are here to learn. The only way to truly escape it is to transcend it through whatever way or means that is spiritually significant to you and to your own moral belief system.
From my study, understanding, and connection, this merging point- this veil lifted, this turiya, is what Yogic Philosophy calls Pure Consciousness or the veil before transcendence to Pure Consciousness. In my eyes, how we get there is the individual truth found by living and learning through our own experiences before we can see it all as a whole. I can only speak to my experiences as you can only speak to yours. Yet, in the greater context- the materials of your box are still ultimately the same as my box.
This very concept took my scientific analytical mind a great many years of direct spiritual experiences to blur the lines of what I considered to be fact. For some of us, it is the opposite- taking a great many years of slowly dissolving ancestral beliefs carried down from generations without the acceptance to question where they came from and whether those beliefs still ring true.
There is this Vedic mantra that I learned while in a retreat a couple years back. Mantra is essentially defined as the ancient science of sound. Specific syllables represent specific things and the combination of them yield differing results. The group I stayed with lived and breathed Tantric teachings and before every meal, they would chant:
Om Purnamadah Purnamidam
Purnat Purnamudachyate
Purnasya Purnamadaya
Purnameva Vashishyate Om
Loosely translated to English as:
This is whole and complete, that is whole and complete
This and that are whole and complete
From wholeness comes wholeness When a portion of wholeness is removed, that which remains is whole.
“Om Purnamadah Purnamidam, Purnat Purnamudachyate, Purnasya Purnamadaya, Purnameva Vashishyate, is a Shanti mantra from our Upanishads which describe the infinite eternal nature of Parahbrahma, the infinite and complete state of the universe. The spiritual meaning of this chanting is very significant, and this chanting from the time of our Vedas is reflected in the way how modern science realizes nature and universe. It explains the self-sustaining nature of the cosmos, the completeness of the universe. What is complete gives birth to something which by itself is complete. The universe is complete and from the universe is born our world, which again by itself is complete. If we take away fullness from fullness, fullness still remains, thereby incorporating the inexhaustible infiniteness of Parabrahma.”
At the time, I could only comprehend the meaning merely through translation and logic. Like many esoteric concepts, I had only scraped the surface of it’s truth. It is like learning about something only through study and reading- yet never truly experiencing it or feeling it. I had to feel the meaning for myself before I could truly comprehend it’s significance. Not only this, but I had to allow myself the permission to feel and short circuit my default of thinking and dividing. It was a not more than a year later when I lost an endearing friend and light to our community that this mantra’s meaning further revealed itself to me. It was through this common shared human experience of grief and more familial grief months later- that truly gave me the context to switch from a Dualistic worldview to a Non-dualistic worldview.
From then on, my surface scholarly pursuit for the purpose of gaining knowledge and truth became a moot point. My education, my degree and certifications, and all the reading and studying did not matter because it meant nothing if I did not experience that which I had studied about.
Sometimes as scientists we are criticized for casting aside that which cannot be repeated over and over again because it does not fit into the materialist worldview of concrete data. Other times as spiritual and religious brothers and sisters, we are criticized for casting aside that which does not fit into our moral compass to only pursue our hard beliefs as truth.
In my own polarizing experiences, I can identify with the duality and still give myself the permission to allow love and acceptance to define my ultimate quest for truth. I don’t have to agree with it all, but I do honor and respect the choices we make in our human existence blueprints. I believe that we can all practice to do the same when we allow ourselves the permission to color outside of the lines.
We can be in the world but not of it.
As above so below.
All is part of Divinity.
Blur the lines until they no longer remain- as if seeing through the lens of a hazy water droplet.
In this, we can see that we are individually one but also inherently of the same spark, the same truth, the same light.