Science and spirituality

[Guest guest]

Jay wrote:

> All these ideas are strongly based on a 'materialistic' approach.

> They all fall back on trying to explain 'reality' by reductionism

> (mathematical approach).

> Explain everything via - matter (and the energies associated with this

> matter).

> 'Spirituality' as a subject has a difficult task ahead if it is to survive

> the next millennium.

 

I would like to suggest that there is no

contradiction at all between materialism

and spirituality, but first let me

clarify my terms. By materialism I

understand the idea that the material

world is all there is and I understand

spiritualism to be the idea that there

is some other noumenal reality that

includes souls, ghosts etc. (Materialism

therefore is not 'consumerism' which to

my mind is anti-materialist since it is

more concerned with status symbols than

with things.) My contention is that

spiritualism and spirituality are quite

different from each other; in fact in my

understanding they are mutually

antagonistic.

 

The most exalted spirituality that I

know of holds to the vision that every

minute particular of this material world

of

ours is holy. It demands of us that we

find our salvation here and now in the

humdrum circumstances of our day to day

lives and not in some afterlife or in

some epiphany which is not generally

granted to ordinary mortals

(and which we therefore cannot have much

realistic hope of benefiting from

ourselves); on this view salvation or

enlightenment does *not* belong in the

domain of spiritualism.

 

Materialism acknowledges that

everything, without exception, is

transient, a fact whose importance was

recently underlined by Madhava and which

I beleive is the key to understanding

the 'not this, not this' exercises of

the Upanishads which wean the adept off

the idea of identifying his atman with

any particular thing on the grounds that

all particular things will sooner or

later be destroyed. (And I believe that

it is also necessary for the adept give

up the notion that atman is a

disembodied consciousness.) There is to

my mind a very strong strain of

materialism in the Gita, namely the

emphasis on prakriti and the gunas.

(Prakriti is the material world and the

gunas are the strands from which it is

woven: 'There is no actuality on heaven

or on earth which is free of these gunas

born of prakriti'.) The reason for this

I think is to convince us that man's

entire inner life is part of prakriti,

that he doesn't have a 'self' to call

his own:

 

Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind

(manas), understanding (buddhi) and the

sense of I (ahamkara)

This is my prakriti which is divided

eightfold. (VII.4)

 

It won't appeal to everybody but I would

like to point out that Spinoza's

_Ethics_ is entirely rationalist and

materialist and it has no spiritualist

tendencies at all (the presentation is

actually modeled on Euclid's elements)

and I think that this shows conclusively

that there is no contradiction between a

rigorous (reductionist) scientific

outlook and spirituality. Spiritualism

is another matter.

 

Regards,

 

Patrick