Some of you have probably been muttering to yourselves, "Why the hell is he going on about visions in the desert and such nonsense? He studied physics at a decent school and didn't even advance as far as Brian Josephson before he lost it." Hmm, well, yes, right you are. Here I attempt to explain my views on the reconciliation of these two traditions.
Science examines the world around us, taking concepts that our minds can comprehend, from, say igneous rock to adenosine triphosphate to differential manifolds, and examining their properties and how they relate to other parts of our conceptual library. Science purports to explain how the observable and logical worlds work, and has done so convincingly well. Its goal is objective truth.
What science does not convey is quality or subjectivity. What is the nature of our experiences, or, as my teacher put it once, what's it like to be alive? You could start investigating this by asking questions like: I feel happy (or whatever) now. Why am I happy? Who decided that I am happy? Is the quality of happiness consistent if I examine it closely? Who is the "I" that thinks it is happy? What is the process in which it becomes happy? Is there something fundamental to this process or is it kind of arbitrary? These are the kinds of questions which meditation, a close, uninterrupted observation of one's experience, seeks to answer. They lead to the kinds of observations about the basic nature of our existence about which I have written.
There is some overlap between objectivity and subjectivity, as shown by the increasing neurological and psychological studies of meditation these days, or, I suppose, by attempts to study the psychology of happiness. But even if someday, there is a precise characterization of the brain activity of someone who is enlightened, graduate students or professors studying this characterization will not become enlightened. At a lower level, scientists have a pretty good description at the cellular level of what pain is, but does that convey the experience of pain?
1 comment:
Good lord, I hope you are not contemplating these thoughts at work! A little "weightier" than the science could handle, perhaps. Nonetheless, it seems that ultimately there isn't a distinction between the "truth" as seen from the vantage point of objectivity OR subjectivity...that together they are perspectives that constitute the whole. Perhaps that is in fact what you are saying.
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