A Science of Spirituality

By Hyatt Carter

What is the heart, or core, of science that makes it so powerful? With such dazzling feats as putting men on the moon, science, rather than religion, seems to be the realm where modern miracles routinely take place. One thing that clearly empowers science is its method. The work of science is done by two contrasting but complementary sensibilities: the theorist and the experimentalist. It is the dynamic interplay between these two that accounts for the amazing vitality of the scientific enterprise.

The experimentalist expands our senses, so that realities, hitherto unglimpsed, may be seen for the first time. The theorist expands our imagination, so that our reach may exceed our grasp (or what’s a “meta” for?). As in a dance where one dancer now takes the lead, and then the partner, one is the source of novelty for the other. And through reciprocal testing and analysis, they keep each other honest. A good example of how the experimentalist keeps the theorist honest is Galileo’s correction of Aristotle:

Aristotle theorized and came to the conclusion that a falling object falls with a constant speed, and that a heavy object falls faster than a light one. So great was Aristotle’s influence that this mistaken view prevailed for two thousand years. And then along came Galileo. By the simple experiment of using an inclined plane that slowed the motion of a “falling” ball as it rolled down the plane, Galileo was able to observe that a rolling ball clearly accelerated, and that a heavy ball rolled down the plane no faster than a light one. Modern experimental physics begins with Galileo.

Late in the 19th century experimentalists in their labs were making discoveries that revealed new realities, such as radioactivity (Becquerel, 1896) and the photoelectric effect (Hertz, 1887). Since Newtonian science could not explain these discoveries, it became evident as the 20th century opened that a new theoretical framework was called for. It was thus the work of experimentalists that impelled the formulation of a scientific revolution called Quantum Theory.

The defining moment for a theorist is the creative leap of imagination—from the concrete welter of observations and experience, he abstracts a general theory that unites them all in a higher synthesis. Rational thought, or reason, will then guide him in deducing specific theoretical results or predictions that logically follow from the theory. And it is here that the experimentalist takes over by devising concrete experiments that will either confirm or falsify the theory. If an experiment does falsify the theory, then it’s back to the drawing-board for the theorist.

If you note the italicized words in the preceding paragraph, you will find the very core (c.o.r.e.) of the method used by science: creativity, observation, reason, and experiment.

Albert Einstein, perhaps the greatest theorist in the history of physics, once drew a diagram to illustrate this method:

Creativity is crucial for the scientific enterprise; there’s simply no other way to make the imaginative leap from experience to theory. Reason alone will never make that leap. As Einstein said, “For the creation of a theory, the mere collection of recorded phenomena never suffices—there must always be added a free invention of the human mind . . .”

At the beginning of his career, Einstein was for a time under the intellectual influence of Ernst Mach, a staunch advocate of positivism in physics. (Positivism rejects any ideas not based on sense-data or verified by mechanistic operations.) Eventually, however, Einstein was persuaded away from this position, partly by arguments from Max Planck and, what was perhaps a stronger reason, by the success of his own new non-positivistic methods of thought. This was fortunate for Einstein and for physics. It was the considered opinion of physicist Heinz Pagels that Einstein would never have discovered the theory of relativity if he had remained a strict positivist!

Another great theorist in the 20th century, Alfred North Whitehead, had the gumption to not only challenge some aspects of Einstein’s theory of relativity but also to write a book wherein he expounded an alternate theory (The Principle of Relativity, 1922). Here is Whitehead’s description of his method of speculative thought:

“The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation.” (Process and Reality, p. 5)

Note the similarities of this to Einstein’s diagram and to the general method of science that weds theory and experiment.

Like the left and right hemispheres of the brain, or like yin balancing yang, or like the symbol of medicine, the caduceus, with its two intertwining snakes in an upward spiral—these two, experiment and theory, are a paradigm for the power of complementarity.

The creative rhythm of science is thus a twofold process, a perpetual oscillation between Theory and Experiment, a yin-yang relationship, a flux of the concrete and the abstract.

The Way of Experiment:
To Know, Do!

Theory and experiment also play their respective roles in spirituality but not, I think, with the dynamic interplay displayed in science.

It is the task of philosophers and theologians to theorize or speculate about all aspects of the religious life. In the Western tradition the great mystics would seem to qualify as experimentalists, since their vision is grounded in a direct experience of the Holy Reality. But I don’t see the fruitful collaboration here that I see functioning between the theorist and experimentalist in science. Nor does experiment play as decisive a role, especially in the West.

Insofar as the word “theory” is not taken in a pejorative sense, the scriptures and sutras of the world’s great religions may be thought of as a special case of theory. Granting that such writings are rightly revered, granting even that they may have been inspired, they still tell only half the story, and maybe not even the better half. To use a Buddhist image, they are fingers pointing to the moon, and not the moon itself.

What, then, is the “better half” that the great spiritual luminaries, such as Jesus and Buddha, bequeath to their immediate followers? What is the heart or core of their legacy? The pearl of great price is not dogma or doctrine, not the way of words; rather, it is a set of instructions for practice: the way of experiment. It is what Ken Wilber calls the Way of Injunction.

A quote from the mathematician G. Spencer Brown will help to make clear what Wilber means by the word injunction: “It may be helpful at this stage to realize that the primary form of mathematical communication is not description, but injunction. In this respect it is comparable with practical art forms like cookery, in which the taste of a cake, although literally indescribable, can be conveyed to a reader in the form of a set of injunctions called a recipe. Music is a similar art form; the composer does not even attempt to describe a set of sounds he has in mind, much less the set of feelings occasioned through them, but writes down a set of commands which, if they are obeyed by the reader, can result in a reproduction to the reader of the composer’s original experience.” (Laws of Form, 77)

Whether you’re a scientist, a philosopher, or a mystic, Wilber claims that every valid knowledge quest has three strands: 1) Injunction, 2) Illumination, and 3) Confirmation.

The injunctive strand is an experiment with the general form: If you want to know “A,” then you must do “B.” If you want to know whether the sky is clear or maybe partly cloudy, go outside and take a look. If you want to understand the Pythagorean Theorem, buy a geometry book and study it. If you want to hear “the sound of one hand clapping,” find an enlightened Zen Master and let him guide you through several years of work on the one-hand-clapping koan.

The illumination is the actual experience of “A” during the practice. You go outside and see (for yourself) whether the sky is clear or partly cloudy.

Confirmation (or rejection) occurs when you compare your results with a community of like-minded individuals who have also taken up the injunction and stayed with it long enough to experience the second strand: a direct apprehension of knowledge. One must persevere on the path until the “inner eye” becomes adequate to the illumination revealed by the experiment. Like the inquisitors who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope, those who do not fully engage the experimental path are not qualified to reject the realities revealed by that path.

Perseverance is required because this is a cumulative process and, in an evolutionary universe, creativity through a developmental process is the very nature of reality. Even mind is not simply a given at birth; it is developmental. The French psychologist Jean Piaget clearly distinguished and described the developmental stages that a child passes through in the process of growing up. Or as Ken Wilber puts it, “. . . mind itself has at least four major stages of growth: magic (2-5 years), mythic (6-11 years), rational (11 onward), and . . . vision-logic (adulthood, if then).” Feral children who as infants get separated from the human community and then survive in the wild are a tragic example of what happens when this developmental process is thwarted.

With each new stage, higher levels of understanding become possible. For example, the complexities of math are opaque to a child until she reaches the cognitive level classified as “formal operations,” where it first becomes possible to engage in abstract thinking. For a variety of reasons (indeed, variety may be the reason), these possibilities are not equally actualized by all: while some delight in math and find it as easy as pi, there are many others who either couldn’t care less or are downright terrified at the mere thought of taking an algebra class.

In a universe where creation continues, individual development has no terminal point; indeed, it need never stop! Like expanding ripples on a still pond, consciousness can become ever more expansive, ever more encompassing, ever more ever more—and the Way of Experiment is a reliable method for accomplishing this.

Ticket to Athens

The Buddhists can lay claim to what may well be the longest ongoing experiment in the history of humanity. I refer to the practice developed by Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism.

After trying, without success, everything the ascetic Yoga of his time had to offer, he streamlined his practice and simply sat in meditation under the Bodhi Tree until he experienced enlightenment upon seeing the morning star. On that momentous morning, under a softly brightening sky, there awakened a Buddha—a threshold had been crossed and, with the crossing, a revolutionary breakthrough in the evolution of consciousness.

What does it mean to say that Siddhartha awakened—just what is that he awakened to? Fundamentally, he awakened to a new way of knowing. And zazen is the injunctive or experimental path that enables one to reach this new way of knowing.

Rather than merely reading or hearing about the spiritual breakthrough of the Buddha, this practice enabled his disciples to directly experience that breakthrough themselves—in the laboratory of their own consciousness. Is this not a pearl of great price?

With this practice, that has been handed down, polished, and refined for more than twenty-five centuries, you can sit under the Bodhi Tree not with the Buddha but as the Buddha, and reproduce, in your own mind, the Master’s original insights. Or, to state it another way, you can “let that mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”

Zazen, as an experiment, is a cognitive tool or technology; it is an interior technology on the spiritual quest just as a telescope, for the astronomer, is an external technology. Both reveal realities that the “naked eye” cannot see. With a telescope, the rings of Saturn become visible; with a profound interior technology, one can, with poet Henry Vaughn, see “eternity . . . like a great ring of pure and endless light.” When all three strands of the knowledge quest are rigorously honored, a spiritual experiment is just as valid as one performed by physicists in a laboratory at MIT, and the illumination apprehended in such an experiment is grounded in evidence every bit as solid.

This illumination or direct apprehension transcends the realm of rational thought. Here too, as in Einstein’s diagram, there must be a leap of creative intuition. A step-by-step logical process, no matter how subtle or refined, can never blaze a rational trail that arrives where spiritual intuition leaps.

But these “peak experiences” are only a beginning. One must steadfastly continue to practice and, as the practice matures, these momentary states will be transformed into permanent traits. The transformation is from peaks to plateau to permanence.

It is through these deep spiritual practices, or the Way of Experiment, that both the individual (Buddha) and the spiritual community (Sangha) can continue to evolve and ever more completely embody and express the truth (Dharma).

The trajectory of future human development will be on a course empowered by the creation of new inner technologies. Some of these will be integrated with the technology of science, especially the rapidly evolving field of electronics and computers. Already there are “mind machines” that can help you catch the wave into your neurocosmos. In the prophetic words of Ken Wilber, “The coming Buddha will speak digital.”

In science, the relation between theory and experiment is a strong, healthy, and fruitful marriage; in spirituality, especially here in the West, the relation is more like a flirtation. I propose a marriage: let there be a wedding, and let the dance begin. If these two ever begin to tango, as they do in science, watch out! The sparks will fly and there will flame a new science of spirituality.

I’ll end with a conversation between two people in Aldous Huxley’s novel, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan:

“I like the words I use to bear some relation to facts. That’s why I’m interested in eternity—psychological eternity. Because it’s a fact.”

“For you perhaps,” said Jeremy.

“For anyone who chooses to fulfill the conditions under which it can be experienced.”

“And why should anyone wish to fulfill them?”

“Why should anyone choose to go to Athens to see the Parthenon? Because it’s worth the bother. And the same is true of eternity. The experience of timeless good is worth all the trouble it involves.”

“Timeless good,” Jeremy repeated with distaste. “I don’t know what the words mean.”

“Why should you?” said Mr. Propter. “You’ve never bought your ticket to Athens.”

[Note: this article owes much to the writings of Ken Wilber, especially The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion.]