A New Science of Spirituality?

 

The physical sciences have been highly successful, for example, in advancing medicine, consumerism, and militarism. The psychological sciences, from behaviorism to psychoanalysis, have also enjoyed some measure of success.  And yet, one wonders how effective all this has been, given our 21^st century world struggling against manmade climate disaster, injustice and exploitation rampant among the rich and powerful,  and murderous wars and warmongering everywhere.

 

Something is gravely missing.  In my view, we need a new science—this time, a science of spirituality.  There are, of course, reams of theological works and all sorts of philosophies of religion. But a science of practical and effective spirituality is what battered humanity really needs. Again, where has all the clever talk taken us, with international crime at a post-Nazi peak, and corporate greed driving Mother Earth to over-heated violence and suicidal disorder.  To deal with the problems that beset us, we need to change the way we relate to other human beings—spiritually and economically.  And we need to work on the way we relate to the natural world of which we are a part.  

 

What brings us into a more harmonious relationship with other people and the living world around us? That is the question.  A new science of spirituality would guide us toward the necessary changes.   We need revised values, a new style of existence.

 

There could be no spiritual science if materialism were true and nothing existed but physical reality. But materialism is false. It is falsified by the existence of irreducible consciousness and uncontrollable free will; and by mountains of paranormal and ufological data.   What’s more, I have only to be conscious of my consciousness to see it is something radically unphysical!  Can you weigh it, measure it, locate it in space and time, as you can with material things?   

 

The main obstacle to a spiritual science, materialism, is false. The door to a spiritual world is open.  But how do we enter?  This takes us to the second point.  Thanks to the way medical technology has evolved, people can be resuscitated from near or temporary death and we can learn from them what they experienced.

 

Rather than fade into nothing, they break free from their dying bodies, and find themselves in a strange but amazing  world.  It’s a place with all the properties we might link to a spiritual world.   

 

I have watched, listened, and read about near death encounters at great length, and am continually intrigued and surprised.  In part, because of the variety and unique way each story unfolds. But there are recurrent features of the experience. It has a structure.   For example, this whopper, being suddenly out of one’s body and watching medics or family  hovering over your dead body!  They are trying to revive you.  You’re curious and somewhat bored.  Next, you move into velvety darkness or are greeted by a voice or angelic guide and start to move and fly away from your body.

 

You are drawn to a point or orb of light that may swell and embrace you with sensations of ineffable  love. There are marvelous colors, sublime music, heavenly landscapes. Most powerful is the life-review in which you relive your life experiences with other people, but this time around you see and feel the effects you had on others, malign and/or benign. This part of the experience is profoundly transformative. And last but not least, after they are resuscitated, the creative force of the experience carries over into how they live back on Earth..   One’s life is lighter and brighter. One emerges with new psycho-spiritual powers and a more transpersonal perspective.  

 

So we have the near-death experience as a model of what happens to our consciousness when it is torn from the plane of ordinary life.  Freed from the deadening effects of materialism and shown how ordinary people, regardless of what they believe, can be totally transformed, we have the basis for a new spiritual science.  Evidence in abundance exists that we have the raw materials we need to develop a new science of spirituality.

 

Great powers lie in us all, buried in the depths of our inner selves.  If modern science so chooses, it can be exploring ways to awaken these latent powers of self-transformation.  Spiritual exploration is as old as the hills. Shamans, yogis, and mystics of all times have invented and evolved methods of awakening the higher forms of mental life. Seems like the time for science to hook up with traditional spiritual practices in the supreme project of the human race—to realize the godlike potential in us all.