Spiritual idealists have been trying to claim observations of the natural world as proof of the ether since lightning and thunder first made us piss our loincloths. And as each generation turns, what science has continuously proven is that the natural worlds, both of Newton and of Einstein, do not need a spirit to intervene and make it work.
Sure, there’s a great series of correspondences here. Newton’s laws correlate with Karma. Relativity mirrors alchemy and laws of vibration. Wave function collapse theory is a great metaphor for the power of clairvoyance. But that’s what it is. A metaphor. And it’s where we should be comfortable leaving it.
Spirituality, for a large part, is sublime and subtle. It loses integrity in the hardlines and sharp definitions of science. That isn’t a weakness. It’s actually a fundamental quality of the world. Am I my body? If so at what point do I end? Am I my microbiome? These aren’t answerable questions, but the answer isn’t the point. The gaping hole left by the un-answerability speaks to the truth of the natural world. A truth that science not only can’t explain but is actually quite unconcerned with.
Here’s your enlightenment: if you need to prove that the spirit exists to yourself, then your connection to spirit was too fragile to begin with. That fragility shouldn’t be shimmed by intrinsically weak logic or false statements. In fighting to make the case for it we end up with pseudoscience and superficial spiritual systems, both of which fail to produce the depth and purity of effect of their more rigorous counterparts.
Science is our observation of the natural world.
Spirit is that we observe at all.
And that’s enough.
Science answers how.
Spirit is awed by why.
And that’s enough.
Science is the fact that things happen.
Spirit is the wisdom that it means something.
And guess what. That’s enough.
If you really want to help demonstrate the reality of spirituality, lead someone down a spiritual journey. Teach them how to open their awareness to the present. Make them listen to Colors of the Wind while using hallucinogens. But don’t turn reserved scientific words and unvalidated reports into “proof” of the unknowable. Trying to force shut false Cartesian dichotomies by appropriating precise sciences and leveraging the general population’s ignorance of how quantum math works and the apparent paradoxes thereof is foolish. It’s MANIPULATIVE at best and SPIRITUALLY BACKWARDS at worst. That’s not to mention the very real and measurable damage it does to science which needs a sterile and ethically unbiased environment to do its job.
I’m sorry. I know it’s convenient to do it. And I know you do it because most of you are scared. You’re scared that science is totally correct and is the only paradigm the world needs. You’re afraid that if you don’t claim some corner or scrap of what scientific observation has that you will lose what seems to be an age-old war. But let me assure you of something. If you continue to attempt “God of the gaps” tactics, you will run out of credibility before you even run out of gaps. And then you will lose. Which is a shame because the world honestly needs spirit. It needs wonder. It needs to bathe in the sea of experience.
So please, read this and repeat after me because we will all be better for it if we understand that suspending experience in blissful wonder is really what we’re mostly meant to do: “simply observing that I am is enough to validate my soul.” There, you can release all that anxiety now.
Thank you.
*slow claps*