I
love a good question; it is like a sudden fire—igniting and then lighting your
way as you path possible new horizons. Good questions provoke
thought and dialogue. From the mess that oft arises out of the
initial forays toward 'answers' once the question has been
heard, direction is discovered, and then what insight is possible gets
rendered or perhaps 'distilled' out. A good question, asked at just the
right time, can become the stimulus for a disciplined process that may result,
in time, in a small swig of wisdom's good wine.
An
old friend – who asks good questions – recently asked me how I make sense of
transcendence from a scientific standpoint. I was stirred up in the attempt
to cull an answer from the sediments of settled thought and the – I assumed –
already reasoned-out consequences of my own journey. I was surprised at
what I ended up writing, and my thinking about this has continued for a few
days. If I continue the dialogue here, will I possibly reach new tethers
of understanding?
Transcendence
is that quality of experience in which we 'feel' ourselves to be 'out of
ourselves;' and perhaps 'in touch' with something greater than ourselves.
The Transcendent is a state of consciousness; and as such has long been an
object of the spiritual quest and the subject of mystical experience. At
root, ‘transcendence’ names the experience of 'going beyond' ourselves;
'jumping out' of ordinary waking consciousness into a 'something more,' however
briefly.
One
does not have to believe in a deity to experience transcendence. It is
not so much about a 'something out there' as it is a 'something more' that we
are capable of experiencing; because of the way we are ‘wired’ as human animals.
To experience transcendence is to have a moment of transforming union with the
'what is.'
As
I've often said before in these pages, science is a method that opens us to the
"what is" by revealing the nature of Nature to us. Science has
the power to take us beyond our personal and cultural biases. It shakes the
cardboard hut of self-assured belief in which we too easily cocoon
ourselves, and awakens us to the objective reality of the world
around us.
Many
people are threatened by the revelations of science, but fear does not make them
any the less revelatory. If we are to have genuine self-knowledge; if we
are really to "know ourselves" [a prerequisite for wisdom] we must
embrace and accept what science has shown us to be true. While scientists
are always out on the frontiers of knowledge, either discovering new things
about the universe (such as dark matter and dark energy; whether or not these
turn out to be 'real,’ the experimental and observational evidence points to
‘something’) or else filling in the blanks in our understanding of something
already known [e.g., the history of life via evolution], there is a body of
knowledge that science has shown to be true that is not likely to change.
It is in this that we must be immersed if we are to come to a true knowledge of
ourselves and each other.
Two
questions are helping me explore the issue of transcendence from a naturalistic
and spiritual point of view:
Does science foster transcendent
experiences?
Does it enhance our experience of transcendence?
_Let me tarry here, and explore these questions.
I
think I would answer both of these questions in the affirmative. I can
see how both the study of science and the practice of science foster
experiences of self-transcendence. Understanding the revelations of
science (that body of reliable knowledge about the nature of Nature) enhances
those transcendent experiences that we have. Let me try and explain this
in some preliminary way.
Once
we learn what the sciences have revealed about the cosmos and we accept it, the
world may shift around us. When going deep into evolutionary biology and
paleontology for the first time, I felt myself moving into the real world
in a way I had never known before; all prior understanding of the world through
evolutionary biology has been vague by comparison! I was taken 'out of my
skin' when meditating on the depth of time and the scope of environments
through which life has evolved. When I reflected on my own existence as a
result of this long, deep process of change through time, my perception of
myself was irrevocably transformed. In this way, the study of the
revelations of science has fostered a transcendent experience of myself in
context with the history and diversity of life on this planet.
Different
sciences open me to transcendence in different ways.
- I find biology and
chemistry opening me up to the world in the 'downward' direction – leading to
"subscendence" which is just "transcendence in the 'opposite' direction.’
[To experience the 'beyond' is independent of spatial metaphors; whether you go
'up' or 'down' into otherness is ultimately [or fundamentally] {there we go
again!} irrelevant.]
- Earth sciences open me to the 'ground' of our
existence; revealing our nature as Nature. Paleontology and Historical
Geology open the soul to transcendence in the horizontal direction; that of
time. I often have moments of
transcendent 'uplift' while meditating upon myself as one being in the
flux & flow of time; a 'moment' in the evolutionary fabric of being in
becoming—moving ever onward; life having been here for billions of years before
my advent and (hopefully) going on for many more billions of years after my
demise.
- The study of Cosmology and Astronomy seem particularly conducive
to experiences of transcendence, carrying me 'up' in the more classic
'direction' of most western mystics.
To study the Universe is to stand in
awe at the threshold of the whole of existence; an experience that induces in
me a state of self-transforming wonder. Studying the processes by which
the universe has come into existence, evolved, changed and is now unfolding
have led to an experience of what I can only describe as 'union' with the
whole, however 'imperfect' it was, on at least a dozen occasions over the last
decade. [And what does talk of 'perfection' mean in an 'imperfect cosmos'
anyway?)
I
have read various accounts of scientists who, in the throes of discovery, have
had what amounts to a moment of self-transcendence. A description of
Marie Curie's initial elation and wonder over her discovery of radium, as well
as descriptions of Crick & Watson's euphoria at finally getting their model
of DNA right, seem to qualify as moments of transcendence.
If you read
scientists' accounts of their work and especially the personal and
psychological 'rewards' they find in practicing science, it seems that at least
some of them are aware that the experiences they have had are at least similar
to some of the experiences of mystics. It's just that instead of the
repetition of prayers and the chanting of psalms, their moments of
transcendence have been triggered by the repetition of experiments and the
focused disciplines of research, prolonged reflective thought on a specific
problem, and other behaviors engaged in single-mindedly, as well as the
ecstatic ‘opening to the universe’ that oft results from the experience of
discovery.
Science
fosters transcendent experience; it does this by building upon and enhancing
our experience of self-in-the-world; grounding us in the "what is"--i.e., that which cannot be changed just by the way we think about it. There is
a subjective realm in which our experience is 'our own' and in which the way we
think about things does have an effect on how we understand those things.
There is also an inter-subjective realm of experience in which our understanding
is dependent upon our interactions with others, both those significant and unfamiliar to us. But then there is "the Given" – that which is what it
is and is not changed by us changing our minds; it is the objective dimension
of reality.
As
an example of the Given, I often ask students if, during the Middle Ages, when
people thought the Sun and the planets orbited around the Earth, they in fact
did? Of course not, they usually answer. And this references that
dimension of reality that is 'Given.' You can believe that Jupiter orbits
the Earth as passionately as you like, and yet Jupiter – along with the
Earth and the other planets, asteroids and other bodies – will just continue
orbiting the Sun as it always has since the origin of our solar
system, some 4.5 to 5 billion years ago. This is not a
matter of 'opinion' or belief!
What
science reveals is primarily about the Given. Yet what is Given affects
and influences the subjective and inter-subjective dimensions of our
existence. As the experience of transcendence has a subjective as well as
an inter-subjective dimension, the better we understand what science
reveals, the more our understanding of moments of transcendence will be
enhanced within a framework of what is real.
When moments of transcendence are triggered by superstitious beliefs or
by immersion in outdated mythological and religious systems, a person may still
have an experience of transcendence, but it will be out of touch with what is
known to be real.
... Alot more
needs to be said about this_ but perhaps I have said enough for now.
