Science and spirituality

In the 1960s my generation was trying to be sincere and genuine because we thought this would prevent nuking the world out of existence and we were right.

When I grew up I learned about Jesus and Saint Germain and how Saint Germain was Francis Bacon the father of the Scientific Method of breaking all concepts down into hypotheses, theories and laws.

So, I decided to study spirituality and religion around the world and travel and meet Gurus and spiritual people all over the world which I have.

So, at this point I have a whole lot of  hypotheses, less Theories and even less laws. But, by categorizing something as a hypothesis, Theory or Law one doesn't really throw away a lot in life because you just wind up with hypotheses that might be true by the hundreds or thousands. As you prove these ideas and things to yourself one by one they move over to Theories and if they are really good they move over to laws in your life.

But, by using the scientific method on literally all information in your life you often wind up much more successful than most of the people around you because you aren't as gullible as they are because you cut through all the bullshit much more than they do to get to the actual truth. So, people can't get away with pulling the wool over your eyes and manipulating you like they might others.

By God's Grace.

I just call this being a Spiritual and Physical Survivor here on earth.

Science and Spirituality

"The point at which Science and Spirituality converge is where true enlightenment begins".

I was sitting in the UCLA Library reading about Confucius around 1969 or 1970 when I came across a statement. I will paraphrase it here, "Man should study man before he studies spirit". At the time I realized the brilliance of this statement. Because studying spirit before you understand what a man is or more specifically what a human being is likely may confuse you beyond belief.

It is sort of like building a house or home. If you don't start with a solid foundation before you venture off into full creativity of design the house or home will eventually fall down. It is inevitable. Especially, if you live in a place like California where building codes have to be so strict because of ongoing earthquakes, even if you build your perfect dream house the state and counties of California are going to red tag it and make you tear it down.

It is similar to what I'm saying here about Science and Spirituality. If your connection to the spirit isn't practical enough it could kill you or drive you insane eventually. So, studying spirit is only useful if you also start from a practical grounded viewpoint.

Especially, because I was raised a minister's son I son I saw in reality all the time what this statement from Confucius actually meant in real life played out from when I was 6 to about 21 and beyond. People who would try to live a "Fairy Tale" often were soon dead. Their "house collapsed" upon them and they went crazy or they were soon dead.

So, by going to college and studying the sciences like Physics, Anthropology, Social Science, Philosophy(where all the sciences originally came form) allows a person to be grounded in practical reality. However, too much practical reality can just make people bitter, unhappy and alone. So, to combine practical reality with your dreams and visions and your compassion for yourself and others while applying the scientific method to all your researches seems to be the best method towards enlightenment both of yourself and all the people around you which will take the whole human race into a much better future than people building their homes with foundations that are going to collapse upon them during the next tornado or earthquake or tsunami in real life. By "Homes" I mean both spiritual and physical homes.

Confucius - Wikiquote

en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Confucius‎

Wikiquote

This is the kind of person of whom you can say, "he loves learning." ..... before spiritual beings, without any doubts arising about them, shows that he knows Heaven. .... The superior man, while there is anything he has not studied, or while in ...

 

• When the Superior Man eats he does not try to stuff himself; at rest he does not seek perfect comfort; he is diligent in his work and careful in speech. He avails himself to people of the Tao and thereby corrects himself. This is the kind of person of whom you can say, "he loves learning."

 

• At fifteen my heart was set on learning; at thirty I stood firm; at forty I had no more doubts; at fifty I knew the will of heaven; at sixty my ear was obedient; at seventy I could follow my heart's desire without overstepping the boundaries of what was right.
• Retrospection of his own life. From this phrase, alternative names for each decades of human life are derived in Chinese.

• 溫故而知新，可以為師矣。
  • Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher.

• 君子周而不比，小人比而不周。
  • The Superior Man is all-embracing and not partial. The inferior man is partial and not all-embracing.

• 學而不思則罔，思而不學則殆。
  • To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.

• 攻乎異端，斯害也己。
  • To throw oneself into strange teachings is quite dangerous.
  • Note: The word translated "strange teachings" means literally another end [of textile]. There are two different understandings about "strange teachings" or heretical. One possible understanding is "strange from the authentic teaching", another understanding is simply different subjects, just as two authors or two scholastic fields literature and politics.

• 由，誨女知之乎，知之為知之，不知為不知，是知也。
  • You [a disciple], shall I teach you about knowledge? What you know, you know, what you don't know, you don't know. This is true wisdom.
  end quote from:
  
  

  Confucius - Wikiquote

Science and Spirituality

The following is a reprint of an article written on the following day in my blog. However, I have made comments at the end in this article.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Quotes from the Dalai Lama regarding Science and Spirituality

The following quotes are from:  a Book called: "The Universe in a Single Atom" by the Dalai Lama:

begin quote (page unnamed at very beginning of book)

"in each atom of the realms of the universe,
There exist vast oceans of world systems."

From: The Great Flower Ornament
an ancient Buddhist Scripture.
end quote.

Begin quote on page 3 of prologue near top of page:
"---if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims."
"Because I am an internationalist at heart, one of the qualities that has moved me most about scientists is their amazing willingness to share knowledge with each other without regard to  national boundaries.
Even during the Cold War, when the political world was polarized to a dangerous degree, I found scientists from the Eastern and Western blocs willing to communicate in ways the politicians could not even imagine. I felt an implicit recognition in this spirit of the oneness of humanity and a liberating absence of proprietorship in matters of knowledge.

The motivation for my interest in science is more than merely personal. Even before I came into exile, it was clear to me and others in the country that one of the underlying causes for Tibet's political tragedy was its failure to open itself to modernization. As soon as we arrived in India, we set up Tibetan schools for refugee children with a modern curriculum, which included scientific education for the first time. By then I had come to recognize that the essence of modernization lay in the introduction of modern education, and at the heart of modern education there must be a command of science and technology. " end quote.

next quote page 4:
"---The great benefit of science is that it can contribute tremendously to the alleviation of suffering at the physical level, but it is only through the cultivation of the qualities of the human heart and the transformation of our attitudes that we can begin to address and overcome our mental suffering. In other words, the enhancement of fundamental human values is indispensable to our basic quest for happiness. Therefore from the perspective of human well-being, science and spirituality are not unrelated. We need both, since the alleviation of suffering must take place at both the physical and psychological levels." end quote.

next quote top of page 5:
"The dialogue between science and spirituality has a long history--especially with respect to Christianity. In the case of my own tradition, Tibetan Buddhism, for various historical, social and political reasons, the full encounter with scientific worldview is still a novel process. The implications of what science has to offer are still not wholly clear. Regardless of different personal views about science, no credible understanding of the natural world or our human existence--what I am going to call in this book a worldview--can ignore the basic insights of theories as key as evolution, relativity, and quantum mechanics. It may be that science will learn from an engagement with spirituality, especially in its interface with wider human issues, from ethics to society, but certainly some specific aspects of Buddhist thought---such as its old cosmological theories and its rudimentary physics--- will have to be modified in the light of new scientific insights. I hope this book will be a contribution to the critical project of enlivening the dialogue between science and spirituality." end quote on page 5. 

I completely agree that it is yet to be known what value science is within the quest for spirituality within all beings. The way I see it finding your way to understanding your own spirit and mind while also understanding the Scientific method is one of the many paths to enlightenment.

I was raised to believe in Jesus but also in reincarnation like early Christians did before organized State religion changed on pain of death the beliefs of thousands of Christians who either gave up reincarnation publicly or privately in order to stay alive. If they didn't they died.

So, at this point I find that the scientific method and compassion seem to be the most important elements to true spirituality that I have presently found in life. Common sense is also a part of spirituality. Humanism also can be a part of spirituality whether one believes in God or not. Though I do believe in God there are many who do not and it is easy for me to understand why they do not.

However, my personal experience was that "There are no atheists in foxholes". My 16 year old daughter said to me recently, "What does that really mean?" and I couldn't really relate to the fact that it wasn't obvious what it meant. So, this must be another generational difference. 

Basically, the main reason that I believe in God is that there is no doubt in my mind that I would presently be dead if I didn't believe in God starting at age 14 or 15. However, I also realize that one can be spiritual without believing in God. I have experienced this with many Tibetan Lamas. However, because of Tibetan Buddhist Concepts like Vajrasattva and Nyema (The God and Goddess of the Physical Universe)(To actually not offend worldwide Buddhist teachers I likely need to say this differently. The word God and Goddess has a completely different meaning in Buddhism and is a temporary state caused by the inherent problems of dualism. So, it might be more useful to say that in the hierarchy of Buddhas there are two Buddhas who have vowed to stay in the physical universe and not go out into the formless realms until all beings in the physical universe have become enlightened and have permanently ended their suffering. Suffering to Buddhists is not about physical things as much as it is an incorrect state of mind. So to end suffering one must perceive things correctly). So in regard Vajrasattva and Nyema this made me think that even for Tibetan Buddhists to say that there is no God is mostly semantics. However, if an atheist was compassionate and spiritual in helping his fellow man and all beings including himself or herself shouldn't he or she become enlightened and be allowed into heaven too if he or she wanted to go if he or she realized at some point that there really are heavens? I believe the answer to that question has to be "Yes!". So, are science and spirituality compatible in the end? Yes! But if you ask me are religion and science compatible? I would have to say that it depends upon the religion and how one interprets that religion. So, science and spirituality are definitely compatible but science and religion may or may not be compatible depending upon the person and the religion. So, given this in the scientific world we presently live in it likely is more useful to be spiritual than it is to be religious. This is just pure logic. However, we all have to live with the consequences of whatever decisions we make regarding all this don't we?

Because if your religion and your science are in conflict how will you reconcile this? Everyone chooses a different path. My path was to have to reconcile science and evolution and my parents believing a creationist point of view. In fact, I wound up dropping out of college when I was 18 because I could not reconcile Social Science and Evolution with what I had been taught in my parents religion. It took me until I was about 20 or 21 to realize that evolution and creationism were two different languages of thought and that it didn't really matter what language was right or correct. It was more important since I grew up in a Christian country that I could speak both languages than if I believed in what either language believed in. Once I had done that I was free. I had been liberated. The other thing I discovered in the 1970s at Palomar College which was one of the colleges I was attending then was to find Psychology Today Magazines in their library. I had never before been exposed to psychology in any popular or learned form. Just from reading hundreds of articles over the next few years from Psychology Today in the 1970s I found that I was free from a lot of the confusion in my life. I saw how damaged literally everyone I knew growing up had become from what had happened in the Great Depression and World War II. And I knew I could heal myself because I hadn't been exposed to the 20 years of torture that the Great Depression and World War II had brought to the world. Once I discovered this I was on my way to freedom both spiritually and psychologically.

Science and Spirituality

Though my father was a religious man and in addition to being an Electrical Contractor also was a lay minister along with my mother and in charge of a church in Los Angeles, California between 1954 and 1960 (I was 6 to 12 years old at the time), he was also a man of science. Many people in my religion didn't fully appreciate science, however, I was taught to really respect one scientist in particular, Nicola Tesla (the father of alternating current and fluorescent lighting) and a man who once electrified the whole city of Boulder, Colorado so people could have electricity for free. But the problem was that sparks went from boulders and rocks to the hoofs of cows and no radio signals could work using this method because of interference. Though this method likely relates more to how the ark of the Covenant Works and how UFO's might also work(electrically speaking), this was not the method that we have wound up today with simply because it wouldn't be possible to make money from electricity using this method. Since it was reported by some that Tesla was killed because of offering free electricity to FDR during World War II (whether this was true or not) it is a cautionary tale concerning anyone interfering with those who demand to make money from electrical generation worldwide.

So, it is my belief that science is at present is much less about what it is presently possible to do and more about how large cartels and groups and governments worldwide wish to make money from things like the generation of electricity and the general suppression of many technically feasible things and of people disappearing with perfectly good inventions. There are at the very least 100 or more people with great inventions that I have noticed that have suddenly disappeared since I was a child.

If a corporation or government is powerful enough it can make anyone disappear and then propagandize why they are suddenly gone. So, if you are interested in  the many suppressed inventions over the last 100 to 300 years you may or may not find the information available but you will notice how people have disappeared just after announcing to the world many different technical breakthroughs.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that developing one's ethics (spirituality) helps one to navigate the pitfalls one encounters when dealing with not only science but people who think nothing of making people disappear or discrediting inventions as those people disappear.

There have been many movies made about this problem, like "Tucker" the stainless steel car that would never wear out (at least for 25 years or more) and other examples of suppressed technology.

In this article I'm not accusing any one corporation or government of character assassination or  physical assassination of individuals or inventions. I'm simply saying this kind of thing has always happened down through the ages as a way of "eliminating the competition" both directly and indirectly.

So, when people talk to me about the Purity of Science I think to myself, "Give me a break!"
People have been killing each other regarding science and inventions for thousands of years now. (And it hasn't just been religions killing inventors either. Governments, Corporations and competitors have all taken their turn at assassination both of the character of individuals as well as physical assassination.

So, in this article it is my hope that by drawing attention to this fact that more inventions that are actually beneficial to the long term survival of mankind are allowed to exist.

However, the reality is the hit or miss craziness of the real world we all have always lived in. So, good luck world. I hope the inventions we need are the ones we actually wind up with worldwide in the end.

My father was kind of prejudiced regarding Albert Einstein. I could never really figure out why as a child or teenager. However, many people on earth at that time were really horrified at the invention of nuclear weapons. And everyone knew at the time that they never could have been invented without the theory of relativity and so blamed Einstein for nuclear weapons during the late 1940s and especially through the 1950s. There was an ongoing horror that everyone lived with from the dropping of the A-Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What made the U.S. the most powerful nation on earth, also made the whole world horrified because the U.S. and then the Soviet Union were able to destroy the earth 100s of times over with nuclear weapons by the late 1950s and early 1960s. So, even though Americans were proud to be so powerful worldwide that no nation would dare attack us except the Soviet Union, the other side of this was a horror we all lived with of not knowing when any day would be our last as humans in the U.S., the Soviet Union or any place on Earth. So, science in this sense made every day after Hiroshima and Nagasaki a full time Horror movie everywhere on earth.

And by the way, this horror movie didn't really end until the Soviet Union Collapsed
begin quote from wikipedia under the heading "Dissolution of the Soviet Union" begin quote:

"The dissolution of the Soviet Union was a process of systematic disintegration, which occurred in its economy, social structure and political structure. It resulted in the destruction of the Soviet Federal Government ("the Union centre") and independence of the USSR's republics on December 25, 1991. The process was caused by weakening of the Soviet government, which led to disintegration and took place from about January 19, 1990 to December 31, 1991."


So this changed the whole dynamics on earth and the earth is still reeling from these changes because these changes started during the 1930s and 1940s and kept going until 1991. And then everything sort of ended in that form all over the earth. Then the vacuum was filled with Yeltsin and then Putin but the world changed completely how it operated. And to some degree "Osama Bin Laden" replaced the boogey man of the old Soviet Union. It is unknown what Osama Bin Laden will be replaced with now.

I know I have digressed from the original idea of Science and Spirituality.  However, what I wound up with I find to be interesting and useful in its own sense so I think I'll leave it anyway.