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True
freedom of inquiry vs.
the politically enforced reductionism of scientific
materialism
If
science were truly a method for unrestricted
inquiry into any and every corner of human experience
and thought, its limitations would not be so severe. But the
scientific method (as it is practiced in the current, political
climate of scientific materialism) limits itself to the
objective, and largely steers away from the
unrestricted exploration of the subjective (though some non-mainstream
offshoots do try to reconcile the scientific method with a
broader exploration of the subjective, e.g., [Sheldrake,
A New Science of Life; Bohm,
Wholeness and the Implicate Order; Radin,
The Conscious Universe; D'Aquili
and Newberg, The Mystical Mind; Newberg,
D'Aquili, and Rause, Why God Won't Go Away]). Scientific
materialism thus is only really capable of making findings
about the objective aspects of reality. It is
not capable of reaching any ultimate conclusions
about subjective reality, because the very method requires
the objectification of what is being studied. Thus, scientific
materialism’s primary philosophical limitation is that it
presumes that objective reality is the
only reality.
The
philosophy of scientific materialism also has
political force in the sense that it tends to
enforce itself as the only acceptable view on reality. Should
you or I actually claim that we have seen God, or that we
have come into contact with a Greater Reality, we are likely
to be subjected to ridicule —
either covert or overt; in our contemporary, scientifically
materialistic, Western civilization, all such experiences
are immediately interpreted to be (even hallucinatory) by-products
of the material brain, rather than evidence of a Greater Reality.
(However, see our discussion of neuro-theology,
to witness new scientific evidence that this reduction is
invalid.) Indeed, in the materialistic court of evidence,
the sense of our own existence cannot be adequately justified
either!
And
should we claim to believe in a Greater Reality that we have
not (yet) experienced, our right to believe whatever “quaint
beliefs” we want may be acknowledged, but our belief will
also be presumed (automatically) to be solely for the purpose
of self-consolation, and to have nothing to do with reality
itself.
The
logic of reductionism is applied repeatedly by the leading
scientific materialistic thinkers of our times. Here are just
a few examples, so you can get a feeling for how the reductionism
of scientific materialism operates.
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On
the basis of his clinical studies, Sigmund Freud concluded
that the psychological motivation behind much religious
belief is the desire for consolation or return to the womb.
But then he further concluded —
using the logic
of reductionism —
that, since most “religious” people are neurotically motivated
to believe in God, this must mean that
God does not exist. In fact, it is perfectly
possibly for God (not necessarily the God of common belief)
to exist and for large
numbers of people to believe in God (or at least a parental
conception of God) for neurotic reasons.
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Religious
historians studying the Dead Sea Scrolls and other documents
from around the time of Jesus (e.g., [Potter,
The Lost Years of Jesus Revealed; Crossan,
The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish
Peasant; Harwood,
Mythology's Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus; Copan,
Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?]) have suggested
that the evidence they have found indicates that Jesus may
have not been the Son of God, fore-ordained as such from
before time and space (“eternally begotten of the Father,
begotten not made”), but rather a member of a particular
tradition (the Essene tradition), and that He may have learned
from this tradition much of what He would later preach.
(That some of these documents suggest that His mother may
not have been a virgin, and that He may have had brothers
simply reinforces the view that He was not the fore-ordained
Son of God.)They also cite political reasons for why it
was expedient for the early Christians and the Roman Empire
to declare that Jesus was the Son of God. These historians
then further conclude —
again using the logic of reductionism
—
that Jesus was therefore simply an ordinary man, perhaps
a great man, but an ordinary one. In other words, they seized
upon evidence suggesting that Jesus was not the Son of God,
to reduce Him to strictly material terms. In so doing, they
throw out all kinds of other possible alternatives: for
instance, that He was a genuine God-Realizer and a true
Spiritual Master, even if not “the Son of God”. (See, e.g.,
Avatar Adi Da Samraj’s “Exoteric Christianity and the Universal
Spiritual Message of Jesus”; Paramahansa Yogananda’s “Where
is Jesus Now and What is He Doing?” in The
Divine Romance; and Swami Vivekananda’s “The Teachers
of Bhakti” in Religion
of Love.)
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Abraham
Maslow, one of the leading thinkers of the “human potential
movement” re-conceptualized a wide array of mystical experiences
as “peak experiences”. He “secularized” their description,
removing all references to “God”, “Revelation”, etc., feeling
that this was a requirement for their scientific study:
 But
it has recently begun to appear that these “revelations”
or mystical illuminations can be subsumed under
the head of the “peak-experiences” or “ecstasies”
or “transcendent” experiences which are now being
eagerly investigated by many psychologists. That
is to say, it is very likely, indeed almost certain,
that these older reports, phrased in terms of
supernatural revelation, were, in fact, perfectly
natural, human peak-experiences of the kind that
can easily be examined today, which, however,
were phrased in terms of whatever conceptual,
cultural, and linguistic framework the particular
seer had available in his time.
Abraham
Maslow, Chapter III
Religions,
Values, And Peak-Experiences
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But by removing all such theistic references, he permanently
reduced his studies to materialistic, brain-based explanations.
The underlying methodology —
using the logic of reductionism
—
is: If something can be
explained in purely brain-based, materialistic terms, then
it should be explained
that way! In this traditional humanist view, “Realizations
of a Greater Reality” are not different in kind from the
chemically based “high” that runners get. The Ultimate Realizations
are thereby reduced to mere “experiences”.
Avatar
Adi Da Samraj decries such reductionism, and points to the danger
to free inquiry represented by the current political empowerment
of such reductionism, comparing it to the way in which the Catholic
Church controlled the thoughts and the investigations of all
the people who were under the thumb of the Church-State:
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 There
is a difference between scientific materialism and science
as a discipline. Science as a discipline is a form of free
enquiry that is not supposed to predetermine results or superimpose
a point of view on reality apart from the investigation of
reality.
Scientific
materialism, however, is a philosophy. It is not science,
although it tends to be associated with the scientific movement.
It is an ancient philosophy, the philosophy of materialism.
It is a reductionist philosophy. It reduces reality to what
is called “materiality”, and it wants to base all notions
of reality on that philosophical presumption. . . .
Recently
some of us were playing the game called “Trivial Pursuit”.
One of the questions was something like “In 1975, what did
eighteen Nobel laureates proclaim had no basis in fact?” The
answer was astrology. . . . When these Nobel laureates got
together and declared that astrology has no basis on fact,
they had not involved themselves in an investigation of astrology
to the point of determining that astrology has no basis in
fact. They were predisposed
to claim that astrology has no basis in fact. They are philosophically
disinclined to have anybody investigate the matter, to have
anything to do with it.
What
is the purpose of this proclamation then? To get people to
stop having anything to do with astrology. That is its entire
purpose. It is a rather political purpose. . . .
What
is this but a State-based philosophy that decides what you
can do, think, even investigate? . . . It is generally claimed
that the scientific view is superior somehow to movements
that previously dictated what people can do, think, or investigate,
such as the Catholic church in the West, which once held —
and still does hold in some places — control of the State
and determined what was appropriate to believe, think, or
investigate. Was it not only recently that the Pope declared
that Galileo was right? Hundreds of years later! At the time
when Galileo was alive, the Catholic church was in charge
of politics generally and told people that they could not
believe that the Earth is not the center of the universe,
for example. It was not permissible even to investigate the
matter.
Now
people of the scientific materialist faction have gained the
power of the State, but they are doing the same thing again.
[Scientific materialism] is just the new official religion.
. . .
At
the leading edge of science, particularly in the realm of
physics, the discoveries, the theories tested, and so forth
are suggesting that reality is of a different nature than
could possibly be described as [merely] material. Having come
to such a point of view, scientists are finding themselves
in a difficult situation because science
takes place in the world of scientific materialism.
Much of what the leading edge of physics and of science in
general is proposing and also discovering does not square
with scientific materialism. Therefore, science has again
become the circumstance of controversy and conflict.
If
scientists are to obtain grants of money from the State and
be legitimized by the State, anything they do must square
with the philosophy of scientific materialism. Basically that
is the obligation. . . . You may imagine that because you
may live in what is called a “free society” the politics of
your society is all about free inquiry, the freedom to investigate.
You should be more sensitive to the controlling influences
that exist even in the present situation.
Avatar
Adi Da Samraj,
“Free Inquiry and Scientific Materialism”
p. 108 in The Heart’s Shout
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We
are all familiar with the kind of circumstance Adi Da Samraj
is talking about, where the “Davids” in the world can’t get
a hold of enough resources (financial and otherwise) to make
the kind of impact the “Goliaths” are making, in part because
the “Goliaths” generally control the funding. The adequate
funding of alternative energy sources (over and against the
money that continues to pour into fueling the oil industry
establishment) is a currently controversial case in point.
The
new field of neuro-theology
—
“the study of theology from a neuropsychological perspective”
(see [D'Aquili
and Newberg, The Mystical Mind; Newberg,
D'Aquili, and Rause, Why God Won't Go Away] for empirical
results) is another example of Avatar Adi Da Samraj’s point
about suppression of “free inquiry” by a society that is already
given over to the viewpoint of scientific materialism. By
studying the brain patterns of interesting groups (such as
meditating Franciscan nuns and Buddhist monks), a small number
of scientists are arriving at some controversial results .
Here is how one news article recently reported this research:
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The
tension between science and religion is about to get tenser,
for some scientists have decided that religious experience
is just too intriguing not to study. Neurologists jumped
in first, finding a connection between temporal lobe epilepsy
and a sudden interest in religion. As V. S. Ramachandran
of the University of California, San Diego, told a 1997
meeting, these patients, during seizures, “say they see
God” or feel “a sudden sense of enlightenment”. Now researchers
are looking at more-common varieties of religious experience.
Newberg and the late Dr. Eugene d’Aquili, both of the University
of Pennsylvania, have a name for this field: neuro-theology.
In a book
to be published in April,
they conclude that spiritual
experiences are the inevitable outcome of brain wiring:
“The human brain has been genetically wired to encourage
religious beliefs.”
Even
plain old praying affects the brain in distinctive ways.
In SPECT scans of Franciscan nuns at prayer, the Penn team
found a quieting of the orientation area, which gave the
sisters a tangible sense of proximity to and merging with
God. “The absorption of the self into something larger [is]
not the result of emotional fabrication or wishful thinking,”
Newberg and d’Aquili write in “Why
God Won’t Go Away." It
springs, instead, from neurological events, as when the
orientation area goes dark. . . .
If
brain wiring explains the feelings believers get from prayer
and ritual, are spiritual experiences mere creations of
our neurons? Neuro-theology at least suggests that spiritual
experiences are no more meaningful than, say, the fear the
brain is hard-wired to feel in response to a strange noise
at night.
Sharon
Begley,
“Searching for the God Within: The way our brains are wired
may explain the origin and power of religious beliefs.”
Newsweek, January 29, 2001
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Now
what is most interesting is the scientific materialist “twist”
—
actually, a full 180 degree turn! —
that the reporter gives to the scientist’s findings. We’ve
highlighted the relevant sections, in which her reading
of their work is that “spiritual experiences” originate
solely in the brain. Thus they do
not represent evidence of a God or a Greater
Reality; rather, they point in the opposite direction, since
they deconstruct a primary source of evidence people point
to for validating the existence of God and a Greater Reality.
But
—
in fact —
the point of the books
reporting these studies is quite the opposite, as indicated
by the title of one of them: “Why God Won’t Go Away”. The
focus of the work is on how the
mind experiences the Greater Reality. The scientists
go to great lengths to demonstrate neurologically that the
usual reduction by scientific materialism of spiritual experiences
to “hallucinations”, “wishful thinking”, etc. is
wrong. That is, they compare the areas of
the brain used and the nature of the brain activity during
“wishful thinking” and during meditation, and find that
completely
different areas
of the brain are being activated. And so they go on to declare
that the mystical experiences of the subjects:
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were
not the result of some fabrication, or simple wishful thinking,
but were associated instead with a series of observable
neurological events . . . In other words, mystical experience
is biologically, observably, and scientifically real . .
. Gradually, we shaped a hypothesis that suggests that spiritual
experience, at its very root, is intimately interwoven with
human biology.
Eugene
D’Aquili, M.D. and Andrew Newberg, Ph.D., The
Mystical Mind
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Despite
the emphasis on neurobiology, the book is not at all atheistic
in its approach, but makes a point of providing evidence
that the experience of Spirit has a neurobiological correlate,
that is, Spirit is reflected by the brain in a very specific
and unique way that doesn’t match patterns of self-generated
experience, but rather matches the patterns that correspond
to experience of “something real”:
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We
will explore the issue of how “ultimate being” is perceived
and experienced by the human brain and mind. (p. 4)
In
fact, if the mind and brain are responsible for all of our
experiences [because we don’t have any experience except
through their mediation], then they are also the mediator
for our experience of God. Thus, it may be absolutely necessary
to employ the study of the mind and brain in order to understand
fully the relationship between human beings and God. (p.
16)
One
can no longer dismiss the description of such [mystical]
states in the world’s religious and mystical literature
as “the silly imaginings of religious nuts”. (p. 206)
It
is unfortunate that various psychological disorders are
often associated with religious or spiritual phenomena.
This fact has led to the long-standing bias in Western culture
that mystics are crazy. That they are not is attested to
by their prominence in many cultures and religious communities.
Furthermore, as presented in this book, there is increasing
evidence that these [mystical] states are associated with
particular brain states. In fact, the brain may have evolved
in such a way that these experiences were possible. When
considering mystical experiences from a phenomenological
perspective, their significance as real spiritual events
becomes even more impressive. It is possible that with the
advent of improved technologies for studying the brain,
mystical experiences may finally be clearly differentiated
from any type of psychopathology. (pp. 206-207)
Eugene
D’Aquili, M.D. and Andrew Newberg, Ph.D., The
Mystical Mind
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You’d
have to wonder, reading these passages, whether the journalist
was reading a different book!
Thus
this work comes as close as any work in the sciences to
demonstrating that there is
a Greater Reality, since here are these people in
meditation with nothing changing in their material reality,
but with their brains showing all the signs of being exposed
to something that is both real and other than the material
reality. Nonetheless, the reporter begins her article with
a reference to the experience of epileptics; she then goes
on to refer to studies of “more common varieties of religious
experience”, thus making the very kind of spurious association
between religious phenomena and mental disorders, aimed
at discrediting the reality of mystical experiences, that
the authors themselves decried in the passage above! She
then summarized the work of these scientists by writing,
“Neuro-theology at least suggests that spiritual experiences
are no more meaningful than, say, the fear the brain is
hard-wired to feel in response to a strange noise at night.”
This is the exact opposite of what these scientists were
communicating. But it demonstrates Adi Da Samraj's point
that we live in a society that is controlled by the viewpoint
of scientific materialism, and which seeks to reduce everything
to its terms —
even that which cannot be so reduced. As Albert Einstein
said, in opposition to reductionism (presenting his own
version of Occam’s razor):
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And
so, what was, historically, so attractive about science
—
and free inquiry altogether (over and against its historical
political predecessor, the exclusively dogmatic Church-State)
—
should be allowed to come to the fore again politically:
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The
scientific community must understand and acknowledge that
its positive aspect is its orientation toward free intellectual
inquiry. The old exoteric religious institutions perpetuated
an “understanding” of the physical universe that was characterized
by uninterpretable poetic mythologies and all kinds of absolutist
cultic nonsense. Fresh and direct inquiry into phenomena
needed to be permitted. That aspect of the emergence of
scientism was completely positive. The exoteric religious
institutions that existed when scientism began to appear
were not founded in universal Truth or a broadly communicated
esoteric understanding of the “material” universe and the
Way of Man. They were (and remain) downtown exoteric institutions,
traditional cultic institutions, without great [Spiritual
Masters] and without universal Wisdom. In throwing away
this half-baked religion, however, we have also thrown away
all psychic inquiry
into the universe and its ultimate Condition or Destiny.
Intellectual inquiry into the objective phenomena of experience
certainly has its value, but psychic inquiry into the experiential
universe is not only equally essential, it is primary, and
it is more fundamental to the individual. Indeed, such psychic
inquiry is absolutely essential for human happiness.
Avatar
Adi Da Samraj
p. 390, Scientific Proof of the Existence of God
Will Soon Be Announced by the White House!
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