Can science and spirituality merge?

 "Not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” Werner Heisenberg

Truly we have made momentous scientific progress in the last one hundred and fifty years. We have gone from the automobile to the information age. We have gone from the Wright Brothers to super sonic Jets. We have gone from Newtonian Physics to quantum mechanics. We have visited our moon. We have remarkable advances in medicine and medical technology. This is to say that materialist, physicalist science has an impressive sequence of accomplishments. But somehow, we have developed a scientific dogma that eliminates and scorns the spiritual. In spite of that, there is a growing trend to reincorporate spirituality into our day to day lives.

Conversely, spirituality is not without its dogmatic side. Religions are responsible for what appears to be unbridgeable divisions in human relations. It has been the cause of war and blood shed for millennia. It has been a vehicle for control, fear and psychological toxicity and trauma. One could go so far as to say that religious dogma is the cause of materialistic dogma. Physicalist and materialist dogma is a reaction to religious dogma. It exists to completely offset the problems that religious dogma created.

Neither science nor spirituality have the total picture. The strangeness of the universe points to a far more complicated reality. This has come about from the latest advancements in science, especially in the area of the role that consciousness plays. Consciousness is a mystery but it is emerging as an integral part of the nature of reality. Idealist philosophy that once lost its luster is regaining respectability. In fact, it appears to be going full circle. Platonic idealism is enjoying a rebirth, but it is tempered by scientific discovery and advancement.

This leads me to believe that science is not spiritual enough, and spirituality is not scientific enough. In my view, that too is changing. This raises the question is God and inadequate term? Is consciousness a better more descriptive term? Is it not spiritual enough? These are questions that will be answered as we move forward in both arenas.

Moving forward into specifics, let’s take a look at the things that can bring science and spirituality closer together. First, we will look at the historical, philosophical, and religious side of the equation. I want to begin with Greek Philosophy. They thought of the world in terms of the physical, mental and spiritual, I start with Greece because there is a written record. However, I want to stress the idea that Plato claimed that Pythagoras went to Egypt and received ancient wisdom that actually came from a more distant past.

While one cannot be certain, what resonates with me is this knowledge is truly ancient, before Egypt, and I think likely goes back to Atlantis and probably before that. This leads to Hermeticism or Hermetic Teaching.  Plato stated that the knowledge was truly ancient and went back to Atlantis. So, what does this have to do with science, you may ask? For instance, atomism is an excellent case in point. The idea of the atom was widespread across cultures and ancient spiritual traditions. It is present in ancient India; It is in Buddhism.

This reinforces the idea that the story of Hermes Trismegistus is likely based in some form of fact. I am not implying that he existed literally as the story is told. However, the story points to the reality that there were advanced civilizations that predate modernity. Perhaps even civilizations and individuals that had even greater knowledge than what we have today. Civilizations that rose and fell and in the falling left a fragmented story that was incorporated in the beliefs of different cultures and spiritual traditions.

As these stories were told and retold, they developed into dogmatic beliefs that in turn became religions. They show a spiral of awakening and sleeping. Awakening to new possibilities and then sleeping in dogmatic certainty. Yet, underlying it all are the basic truths of the nature of reality.

All of the ancient traditions held mentalism, what we now call consciousness, as the foundational element of reality. It is interesting that in the Kybalion, a hermetic document written in 1908 asserts that the ancients knew what we knew and more than we know about physics and psychology. This suggests that there is a common thread of thought that transcends time and culture pointing to a real knowledge that humanity as a whole holds intuitively.

Moving on to science. We, especially in the western world, were thrust into what has been called the dark ages by a controlling dogmatic religion. The burning of the Alexandrian Library alone speaks to the idea that we have gone in cycles of awakening and sleeping. However, the renaissance led to an entirely new awakening and ushered in the age of reason and in turn brought to fruition the age of scientific materialism. In many ways it was a reaction to the controlling religious dogma of the dark ages.

Newtonian physics described the world as material. Yet Sir Isaac Newton was deeply interested in Hermeticism and the Corpus Hermeticum. Ironically, Newtonian Physics led the way to a materialist, physicalist view of reality. Out of this a new dogma arose. It was the dogmatic view that only things that were material were important and worthy of examination. Spirituality was disparaged. I believe it was not least because of a reaction to religious dogma. In this you can see the Hermetic principle of rhythm. As one looks throughout history, one can see the pendulum effect. The Kybalion states that as far as the pendulum swings to the left, it then swings back to the right.

Scientifically we are now entering the return swing of the pendulum. As Newtonian Physics gave way to relativity and space time and quantum mechanics emerged in particle physics, the cutting edge of physicists, biologist, and cognitive scientists are now moving beyond space time to a deeper reality that at the very least hints of a concept of mentalism.

While there are different interpretations, the concept that information is foundational to reality is pointing toward consciousness being foundational. There are many scientists that are at the forefront of this idea. I am not saying that they all think in terms of the spiritual, but they all show that one who focuses on the spiritual nature of reality is not an ill-informed nut job.

To give an idea of what I am referring to you have Dr. Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist at UC Irvine that is building a case against reality. His hypothesis is that consciousness is the foundation of reality. He is spring boarding off the work of physicist Nima Arkani Hamed who has found physical realities beyond space time. With the winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, quantum entanglement is a proven fact, and the universe is not locally real. Information moves instantaneously which is well beyond the speed of light. String Theory, while not yet proven in a laboratory postulates that at the basic unit of the atom are strings of vibrating resonance that determines physicality. This can be similar to the vibration of thought.

To close, I find it interesting that so many of the intellectual giants of the last hundred and twenty-five years have believed that consciousness or spirituality was foundational. To name a few, are Carl Jung, Werner Heisenberg, Neils Bohr, Bertrand Russell, William James, all of the transcendentalists come to mind. If the pendulum is indeed swinging back to spirituality gaining a renewed importance it is not a bad thing. It makes me wonder what the dogma that develops from this swing will do to humanity. I am optimistic. I see human history on an upward spiral and while there have always been setbacks, the trend is to continue toward higher heights.