If an event is, for example, reproducible it lends itself to scientific inquiry. You can take an apple, drop it off a tree, pick it up, and repeat that repeatedly and make measurements over the distance and the time it falls.

Whereas reproducible events lend themselves to scientific inquiry, unpredictable events lend themselves to statistical inquiry. These are sometimes called ‘chance events’. For example, how many people would die before they reach sixty, or what is my chance to win at a roulette wheel?

Unlike reproducible events that lend themselves to scientific inquiry and unpredictable events that lend themselves to statistic inquiry, singular events lend themselves only to ‘legal’ inquiry (‘faith’ at most). In the statistic sense of the term, science has no ‘jurisdiction’ in questions of origin, questions of destiny, God, life, spirit, mind, soul, etc.

Without being a sceptic – but being critical nevertheless – what can we reasonably (or at least safely), believe then?

On the one hand, we have so-called ‘irrational’ beliefs in telepathy, time travel, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, ghosts, UFOs, mermaids, and fairies. On the other we have ‘rational’ beliefs in the speed limitation of light, warped space (Einstein’s Theory of Relativity), pions, gravitons, quarks (subatomic particle theory), life from nothing (abiogenesis), and humans that are said to have evolved from fish (neo-Darwinism)! We have the so-called wave-particle duality and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in physics and according to physicists themselves, Quantum Mechanics is extremely ‘weird’.

Think for a moment about these scientific ‘facts’ like Einstein’s Relativity Theory, Quantum Theory, Cosmology (e.g. Black Holes, M-theory, and the Big Bang), neo-Darwinism, abiogenesis, et cetera. These are truly very nebulous theories, but they are daily presented to us as if they were indisputable ‘scientific fact’ nevertheless. However, these theories usually are not ‘scientifically proven fact’, but at best, are only working assumptions, hypotheses, mathematical manipulations of wacky mathematical equations, or plain flights of fancy.

The American historian of science Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922-1996), for example, writes, “Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition”. (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962)

For our purposes, we need a very simple schema to distinguish between different thinking systems. With some trepidation, I suggest the following, but please remember this is only a very simple approach to help us think clearer – to minimise all the wool around our thinking process. My suggested representation is as follows, namely:

·          Mysticism                             ≈ Faith à Union with ‘God’

·          Religion/Ideology                ≈ Faith + Dogma + Authority à Group acceptance and Worship

·          Philosophy                           ≈ Faith + Dogma + Logic + Objectivity à Wisdom

·          Science                                 ≈ Faith + Dogma + Logic + Objectivity + Experimentation à Rationality

In a sense it seems like science endeavours to understand reality (the universe) with only the rational mind. Religion worships Reality (God – Eheieh – YHVH – Allah – Zeus – Jupiter) and makes an effort to understand it through emotion and devotion. The mystics’ aim is union with REALITY (GOD – Ain Soph – Eheieh – Brahman) through insight, intuition, prayer, meditation, spiritual knowledge, and understanding. The aspiration of philosophy is to unite all the above perspectives and therefore to understand how humans think about these things!

Theory and practice (incl. experimentation) can also be called dogma and ritual. From the schema above, I would regard ‘the Theory of Evolution’, for example, as a philosophy – it is a little bit more than a religion!

This schema shows us that science in effect carries more baggage than any other thinking system, but the upside is that science has a built-in self-rectifying mechanism when used correctly and sincerely.

Nevertheless, all thinking systems are based on faith (see my essay Gödel, Faith, Rationality, Logic, And Truth). As I see it, mysticism is based on faith with the ultimate aim, to achieve union with God; and science strives for rationality and a study of ‘Nature’ (the physical universe plus life), not truth, or reality!

Mathematics is pure rationality and logic and has no bearing on life and truth outside the realm of mathematics. Mathematics is, at most, a language!

Faith is an acquired taste! No, even worse, faith (illusion?) is an infection and we all have it since a very young age. There is no human being that is not infected, by one or another strain, of ‘the faith infection’ – some strains are admittedly worse than others are, but we are all infected nevertheless. It is just about impossible to get rid of your basic faith infection too – most people will never dare to question their own faith – the fact that they are infected with a reality dimming disease never occurs to them at all. Many people will even get emotional, irrational, and/or aggressive when this fact is pointed out to them!

Faith, in fact, is like blinkers; in some cases, it acts like blinders – faith is an illusion. Faith has as an economist will say – an opportunity cost. However, no one can survive this world without it!

Remember that there is an objective reality out there, but we view it through the subjective spectacles of our faith, beliefs, attitudes, and values. The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts, and discolours the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.

What is called reality, or truth, is in fact a sort of Rorschach inkblot, into which each culture, each system of science and religion, each type of personality, reads a meaning only remotely derived from the shape and colour of the blot itself.

The problem with all types of faith is that it distorts our view of reality and makes our maps of reality disjointed with the area mapped. I am talking about all faiths, like religion, science (‘the Greek disease’), philosophy, et cetera, et cetera. Mystics endeavour to ‘see’ pass these illusions and to observe the reality beyond.

The English word ‘religion’ is derived from the Middle English ‘religioun’, which came from the Old French ‘religion.’ It may have been originally derived from the Latin word ‘religo’, which means ‘good faith,’ ‘ritual,’ and other similar meanings. Alternatively, it may have come from the Latin ‘religãre’, which means ‘to tie fast.’ This has more-or-less the same meaning as the Hebrew word ‘Qabalah’ (to receive, to accept, or even tradition) and the Sanskrit word ‘Yoga’ (union, or to yoke).

Defining the word ‘religion’ is fraught with difficulty. All of the definitions that I have encountered contain at least one deficiency:

• Some exclude beliefs and practices that many people passionately defend as religious. For example, their definition might include belief in a God, or Goddess, or combination of Gods and Goddesses, who are responsible for the creation of the universe and for its continuing operation. This excludes such non-theistic religions as Buddhism and many forms of religious Satanism, which have no such belief.
  
• Some definitions equate ‘religion’ with ‘Christianity,’ and thus define two out of every three humans in the world as non-religious.
  
• Some definitions are so broadly written that they include beliefs and areas of study that most people do not regard as religious. For example, certain definitions would seem to include cosmology and ecology within the definition of religion – fields of investigation that most people regard to be a scientific studies and non-religious in nature.
  
• Some define ‘religion’ in terms of ‘the sacred’ and/or ‘the spiritual,’ and thus require the creation of two more definitions.
  
• Sometimes, definitions of ‘religion’ contain more than one deficiency.

In this essay, I use a very broad definition of religion, namely:

‘Religion is any specific system of belief about deity (God, Truth, Fact, etc.) often involving (1) rituals, (2) a code of ethics, (3) a philosophy of life, and (4) a specific worldview.’

A worldview is defined here as a set of basic, foundational beliefs concerning deity, humanity, and the rest of the universe.

Thus, I would consider Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Satanism, Primitive Ancestor Worship, Native American Spirituality, Paganism, etc. to be religions. I also include Agnosticism, Atheism, Humanism, Materialism, Ethical Culture etc. as religions, because they also contain a ‘belief about deity’ – their belief is that they do not know whether a deity exists, or they have no knowledge of God, or they sincerely believe that God does not exist. 

Science is supposed to be a systemised method of studying the nature and behaviour of ‘Nature’. This is done in order to provide understanding and to develop a description of the basic principles that can be proven through physical measurements and through physical senses and mechanisms by applying the principles of the scientific method.

The scientific method includes (1) making empirical observations, (2) proposing hypotheses to explain those observations, and (3) testing and verifying those hypotheses in valid and reliable ways. Science also refers to the organised body of knowledge that results from scientific study.

Science is not a search for knowledge about any-and-all aspects of the universe, but rather a systemised method of studying the nature and behaviour of ‘Nature’. Some sciences (i.e. biology, anthropology, psychology, even economics, etc.) are supposed to study the non-physical aspects of life, but do they? No, they try their utmost to revert to, and conform to, the physical-orientated model of science!

Neither do scientists always examine the best available evidence either; scientists are only too human. Furthermore, science is always supposed to be subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. In fact, science no longer seeks to explain phenomena and arrive at any kind of reality; rather, it now seeks to classify phenomena according to preconceived models. This, however, is what we would call ‘art’ according to our traditional categories.

There is also the work of Kuhn that makes nonsense of many people’s ideas about science! Kuhn’s book ‘Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ is claimed as one of the most influential and controversial works of history and philosophy written in the 20^th century.

Kuhn argued that scientific research and thought are defined by ‘paradigms’, or conceptual world-views, that consist of formal theories, classic experiments, and trusted methods. According to Kuhn, scientists typically accept a prevailing paradigm and try to extend its scope by refining theories, explaining puzzling data, and then establishing more, precise measures of standards and phenomena within existing paradigms.

Eventually, however, their efforts may generate insoluble theoretical problems or experimental anomalies that expose an existing paradigm’s inadequacies or contradict it altogether. This accumulation of difficulties triggers a crisis that can only be resolved by an intellectual revolution that replaces an old paradigm with a new one. The overthrow of Ptolemaic cosmology by Copernican heliocentrism as well as the displacement of Newtonian mechanics by Quantum Physics and General Relativity is all examples of major paradigm shifts.

Kuhn questioned the traditional conception of scientific progress as a gradual, cumulative acquisition of knowledge (‘the evolution of knowledge’) based on rationally chosen experimental frameworks. Instead, he argued that the paradigm determines the kinds of experiments scientists perform, the types of questions they ask, and the problems they consider important. A shift in the paradigm (changing the map of reality) alters the fundamental concepts underlying research and inspires new standards of evidence, new research techniques, and new pathways of theory and experiment that are radically incommensurate with the old ones.

Kuhn’s book revolutionised the history and philosophy of science, and his concept of paradigm shifts was extended to such disciplines as Political Science, Economics, Sociology, and even to Business Management.

Another very big problem with the definition of science is the understanding of the concept logic. Scientists most imply ‘lineal logic’ (deductive and inductive thinking), rather than ‘recursive logic’ as Gregory Bateson (see Mind and Nature, 1988:61-63) would have it.

Science (and the scientific method) work rather well for research concerning the physical aspects of the universe, but less so for many other aspects of the universe.

However, what do the structure and function of the spiritual and mental worlds look like and how do they compare with that of the material world? What are God, life, spirit, the soul, mind, memory, and consciousness? Where and how did human life originate? What is the purpose of life? What happen when we die?

Metaphysics (‘beyond physics’) is a field of abstract thought and philosophy concerned with the study of ‘first principles’, the nature and being of reality, and knowing (ontology). It is the study of the ultimate and fundamental reality.

Metaphysics includes subjects like existence, the soul, being, the supernatural, astral travel, reincarnation, psychic people, chakras, auras, and psychicism and the manipulation of noëtic symbols as if they were propositions.

Ernest Holmes (The Science of Mind, 1938:86) writes the following on metaphysics: “The laws of Mind, or Spirit, are not different from the laws of chemistry and physics. Metaphysics begins where physics leaves off. Everything is movement; everything we can take hold of and analyze, all things in the physical world or the world of form are in a certain rate of vibration and are an effect. This is the result of ‘an Infinite Thinker’ [God, Spirit, the Absolute] thinking mathematically.”

Epistemology is the study (philosophical discipline) of what is meant by ‘knowledge’. It is the study or theory of the origin, nature, methods, and limits of knowledge. The study of the sources of knowledge; that is, the principles by which one may distinguish what is true from what is not true .

What does it mean to ‘know’ something as opposed merely to having an opinion (or faith)? This issue has been at the core of Western philosophy since before Socrates, since, until it has been answered, all other questions become unsolvable.

What are metaphysical questions and metaphysical answers? Answering these questions requires a distinction between ‘a’ metaphysics and metaphysics (William Irwin [Ed.], The Matrix and Philosophy, 2002). ‘A’ metaphysics is a view of the world (a map of reality) that seeks to be accurate, consistent, comprehensive, and supported by sound evidence.

Metaphysics (without an ‘a’ or a ‘the’), on the other hand, is the learned discipline one practices when one seeks to develop ‘a’ metaphysics, consisting therefore in a set of procedures. Metaphysics therefore is a human tool (based on lineal logic) to assist us with the construction of maps of reality. We are here concerned with ‘a’ metaphysics, rather than metaphysics itself. ‘A’ map of reality, rather than ‘the’ map of reality!

We are occupied with a map of reality (‘a’ metaphysics) that must venture to incorporate all our scientific, religious, and spiritual knowledge and experience, no less!

“Metaphysics is different from both natural science and theology. The sciences are disciplines of learning that, like metaphysics, seek to develop views (make maps) that are accurate, consistent and supported by sound evidence, but, unlike metaphysics, do not seek to be comprehensive.

“The sciences, as opposed to metaphysics, have restricted areas of competence and specialised methods. Astronomy deals only with (physical) astral bodies and its method involves observation and mathematical calculations; physics studies only certain properties of the physical universe (matter/energy) and does so with very specific methods; and so on.

“Theology, like metaphysics, seeks to develop comprehensive views (maps) of the world that are accurate, consistent (rational, logical), and supported by sound evidence; however, the evidence that theology regards as sound goes beyond what we can acquire through our natural powers of reasoning and sensation; it includes both faith and authority [scriptures].” (See Gracia and Sanford, in Irwin, The Matrix and Philosophy, 2002:56-57)

“Metaphysics is what Aristotle called the First Philosophy. It’s a collection of the most general statements of a hierarchical structure of thought.” (Robert Pirsig, Lila, 1992:79)

“You might think from this primary status of metaphysics that everyone would take its existence and value for granted, but this is definitely not so. Even though it has been a central part of philosophy since ancient Greek times, it is not a universally approved field of knowledge.

“It has two kinds of opponents to metaphysics. The first are the philosophers of science, most particularly the group known as logical positivists, who say that only the natural sciences can legitimately investigate the nature of reality, and that metaphysics is simply a collection of unprovable assertions that are unnecessary to the scientific observation of reality. For a true understanding of reality, metaphysics is too ‘mystical’.” (Pirsig, Lila, 1992:79-80)

If ‘only the natural sciences can legitimately investigate the nature of reality’ then we are back with the type of nonsense (modern reductionism) that Rene Descartes liked to proclaim and the problem that Erich Schumacher pointed out in his book A Guide for the Perplexed (1980:19). He referred to this as “an even more significant withdrawal and impoverishment of the human imagination”.

While conventional wisdom had always presented the world as a 3-dimensional structure (as symbolised by the cross in religion and by imaginary numbers in mathematics). It was not only significant and meaningful, but of essential importance to distinguish always and everywhere between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ things and Levels of Being (like the Hebrew Qabalists’ Tree of Life), the new thinking strove with stochastic determinism, zeal, and fanaticism, to get rid of the third, the vertical dimension of life. (See Erich Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed, 1980:19)

The second group of opponents to metaphysics are the mystics. The term mystic is sometimes confused with ‘occult’ or ‘supernatural’, with magic, psychicism, and witchcraft, but in philosophy, it has a different meaning.

Mysticism (ancient Greek mysticon for ‘secret’) is a process of meditation, prayer, or theology, focused on the direct experience of union with divinity, God, or Ultimate Reality, or the belief that such experience is a genuine and important source of knowledge. In the context of epistemology, it can refer to using any kind of non-rational means – such as feeling or faith – in attempt to arrive at any kind of knowledge or belief.

Mysticism is the opinion that a spiritual vision/quest for hidden truth or wisdom takes place, the goal of which is union with the divine or sacred (the transcendent realm). A belief that beyond the visible material world there is a spiritual reality which may be called God that people may experience through meditation, revelation, intuition, or other states that takes the individual beyond a normal consciousness.

The belief that one can achieve direct consciousness of God or truth through prayer, meditation, and intuition. In mystic practices, one attempts to merge with God or the ultimate source of creation.

The doctrine that the nature of reality can be known by direct apprehension, by faculties above the senses, by intuition. “Mysticism demands a faculty above reason, by which the subject shall be placed in immediate and complete union with the object of his desire – a union in which the consciousness of self has disappeared, and in which therefore subject and object are one” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 9^th Ed. ‘Mysticism’).

Some of the most honoured biblical prophets and philosophers in history have been mystics, Plotinus, Swedenborg, Steiner, Goethe, Loyola, Shankaracharya, Abraham, Moses, Enoch, Elijah, Saint John, and many others. They share a common belief that the fundamental nature of reality is outside language; that language splits things up into parts while the true nature of reality is undivided. Lineal thinking (reductionism) and holism are two completely and mutually exclusive ways of thinking.

Zen (Buddhism) and Hinduism, which are a mystic religions, argue that the illusion of dividedness can be overcome by meditation. Note that praying is speaking to God, and meditation is essentially listening to God!

The Native American Church argues that Peyote can force-feed a mystic understanding upon those who were normally resistant to it, an understanding that Indians had been deriving through Vision Quests in the past. (Pirsig, Lila, 1992:80)

“Historically mystics have claimed that for a true understanding of reality metaphysics is too ‘scientific’. Metaphysics [or language] is not reality. Metaphysics is names [e.g. God, life, soul, spirit] about reality. Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty-thousand page menu and no food.” (Pirsig, Lila, 1992:80)

However, if only for communications purposes we do need very clear definitions of concepts. The concepts God, life, spirit, the soul, mind, memory, and consciousness, are all used in a spiritual context. If we apply names to these spiritual concepts just to communicate, it would help at least to define them if only to give some hierarchical, everyday, significance to them.

Life is much about patterns and hierarchies, and the encoding of these patterns and hierarchies into symbols and language as information.

Language is an extremely limited artefact to use in communication. Whatever I experience is my ‘pattern that connects’ me to reality, and to explain that to somebody else I need language, art, mathematics, et cetera.

No means of human communication is truly adequate to explain reality; we can but only approximate by mapping (or modelling) reality.

Your physical experiences are already very tough to communicate to somebody else; your emotional experiences are even tougher; spiritual and mystical experiences are impossible! Other people’s inner experiences unquestionably exist, but they can never be observed by our ordinary senses.

This then is my problem: How do I communicate with you about concepts like life, spirit, the soul, mind, memory, and consciousness? How do I communicate about God, reality, love, and my pain and joy? The only way I can think of to communicate with you (especially over distance and time) is by means of the very restricted lingual apparatus of analogy and metaphor.