Many years ago I was browsing through a New Age bookstore in Los Angeles called the Bodhi Tree. Looking at the greeting cards, my eye fell on a picture of outer space that was a gorgeous pastel panorama of turquoise, pink and yellow sprinkled with twinkling stars. As beautiful as it was I said to myself, “This is the problem with the New Age. It makes everything too pretty. Unrealistic.”
Years later, some new pictures were released that had been taken by the Hubble telescope. What I saw were photos of outer space that looked almost exactly like the greeting card I had seen many years before. I was particularly struck by all the pastels. The artist hadn’t been “unrealistic.” He or she had been prescient.
Science - including quantum mechanics - isn’t debunking mystical truths today so much as verifying them. To say people stay connected on a soul level no matter where they are in time or space is not much different, really, than the theory of quantum entanglement. Science is giving us the alphabet, but the language was already there. Science and mysticism aren’t at odds with each other so much as they are long lost cousins. They explain the other to itself.
An integrative approach to life doesn’t view different modes of knowing as conflicting but rather complementary. Poets and philosophers have some of the most practical guidance to give us now. It’s not an accident that Rumi, born in 1207, and Marcus Aurelius, born in 121 AD, are as popular as today’s rock stars. They were speaking to the science of the heart and mind before science as we know it even existed. Certain truths can’t be scientifically verified, but they can definitely change our lives.
I rarely hear mystics putting down science, but I often hear adherents of science putting down mystics. I don’t hear such derision from scientists themselves, mind you. I once had a fascinating conversation with the late, great Carl Sagan. And like most pure mathematicians or advanced scientists, he knew too much to poo poo the idea that there was more to life than meets the eye. He actually had a mystical bent himself. “For small creatures such as we,” he said, “the vastness is bearable only through love.”
Yet now, when extraordinary scientific discoveries are being hurled at us daily via algorithms and popular news sites, you almost always see qualifiers like, “Don’t worry - this isn’t mysticism or esoteric philosophy.” But what do they mean, don’t worry? What they are describing is exactly the stuff of mysticism or esoteric philosophy, something now proven scientifically that was intuited by mystics in some cases thousands of years ago.
It’s to our detriment if we don’t get over this high school level of disrespect for things we can’t explain. The planet isn’t in the trouble we’re in due to a lack of scientific discovery or intellectual think tanks. It’s in trouble due to a lack of reverence, and ethics, and heart. Scientists have made it clear, for instance, that what we are doing to the ecosystem could lead to total environmental collapse. The problem is the soullessness of those who have the power to fix it, yet just don’t care. It isn’t climate change that’s killing us, really; it’s greed.
True genius is smart enough to know something lies beyond itself. I read that at Steve Jobs’ funeral, a copy of The Autobiography of a Yogi was given to every attendee. It remains unknown whether Einstein actually uttered the words often attributed to him, “The more I know about physics the more I am drawn to metaphysics.” But we do know he said this: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
No, it’s not scientific geniuses who refuse to acknowledge the power of the non-rational; rather it’s the purveyors of mainstream media narratives who are the culprits here, the intellectually lazy elite who too often make their living off being snide. “Non-rational” is a distinctly different word than “irrational,” by the way. A Course in Miracles says that “love restores reason and not the other way around.” It would certainly be “rational” for human beings to stop destroying the planet, don’t you think…?
None of this would matter so much did not the knee jerk derision of all things non-rational have such a limiting effect on the public imagination. There’s a box, and to be taken seriously in certain circles in America you’d better stay within it. This leaves our most important areas of pursuit in an intellectual straitjacket that endangers us all.
I experienced this as an erstwhile political candidate. I had mud thrown my way almost daily, but none more absurd than “She’s anti-science!” or “She only talks about feelings!” or “She’s completely unqualified!” Really? I was qualified enough to see what was coming and to understand what was needed to turn things around. Traditional political-think didn’t tell me that. My heart did. Damn right I had a skill at understanding feelings, and I saw a massive wave of them trending in Trump’s direction. Perhaps if I had expressed myself more “scientifically” and said, “Incrementalism doesn’t exert enough force against the increasing velocity of the emotional wave”….! Silly me, I simply said too many people were in pain.
Months later a top Democratic donor said to me regarding that wave of anger, “We thought we could contain it.” But no spiritually informed thinker would have ever been naive enough to think hitting fundraising goals had the power to stave off evil. A philosophical filter isn’t a lesser one, and in many cases it’s more psychologically astute. It doesn’t mean you’re stupid, or unsophisticated, or blind to scientific truths, or that you’ve never read the Constitution, or that you don’t follow the news, or you don’t understand politics. It simply means what science itself will one day prove: that if the heart is not the ultimate decider, in life or politics or anything else, then we are headed for disaster.
Disaster has arrived. And just as love could have averted it, only love can get us out of it. Humanity needs a radical rethink - and reboot - if we’re to survive this critical moment in our history. Science wouldn’t disagree with that, but it has no capacity to save us unless we’re willing to heed what it has to say. Environmental science describes the breakdown, the species loss, the poison of the atmosphere. It’s love, both committed and fierce, which must then say, “Got it. We will change now.” Science illumines our understanding; it’s love that saves our lives.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Robert Persig was right!
Art+science are equal
Once again, you've shed light on our emerging sense of reality. Those who now study physics deeply describe a world of energy exchange and connection, of fluidity and 'miracles' that would have made anyone's head spin a quarter century ago. Many leading scientists now believe that some sort of consciousness forms the basis of everything. Call it God if you like.