A plea to include the spiritual reality as a field of science
- This page is part of an ERW course, section: Divine Principle - The spiritual world.
- By John Eagles, October 7, 2009.
There are many definitions of what science is. Here I want to plea for the installment of a science of the spiritual reality. I do believe that it is possible to gain knowledge of the spiritual world in a scientific way, but first we need to think about what science exactly means, or has come to mean.
According to the Wikipedia article with the title "science," in its broadest sense science refers to "any systematic knowledge-base or prescriptive practice that is capable of resulting in a prediction or predictable type of outcome."
Common sense, at least my common sense, tells me that science is the methodical quest for knowledge about the reality. As such it doesn't deal with matters of mere belief, but it does study all phenomena that show up in our reality, such as art, music, history, the natural world, etc. In a very general sense, science then means the methodical search for knowledge about the world that we are living in.
We wish to understand the world in that we live. We wish to understand the principles and laws behind the reality that we experience. In a more specific sense, science has come to be associated with the scientific method, which involves a few steps. The first step is to gather data that are observable and measurable. Usually good science requires the method of experimentation under strictly controlled conditions in order to gain new data in an empirical process. One current definition of 'empirical' is: 'derived from or guided by experience or experiment.' The second step is to apply principles of reasoning to these data that lead to testable hypotheses. These hypotheses can be formulated as predictions, which are then tested in new experiments or through new observations. When these hypotheses are confirmed again and again, that what is called a 'scientific theory' is formulated, which generally is regarded as truth so long until a better theory comes up that falsifies or annuls the former one.
The bottom-line of all this is that we want to know the truth. We wish to have correct knowledge about the world around us.
Generally speaking, knowledge about the spiritual reality has always been seen as belonging to what is called 'metaphysics.' There are many definitions of what metaphysical means, but the following is one that I think most scientists would agree with: 'Prior speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.'
But is it indeed impossible for us to gain exact knowledge about the spiritual world? Are spiritual phenomena really not scientifically observable? Could we really not analyze data from the spiritual realms? Is it impossible to conduct spiritual experiments?
It seems that most of the problems are constituted by the fact that all spiritual phenomena can only be observed by humans and not by scientific instruments. But is the difference that big? Who is reading the data that a simple thermometer gives us? Is it not always people whose observations eventually are needed in order to acquire scientific data? As such, I would say that because it needs humans to gather data that alone could not be the decisive factor to conclude that spiritual data are not reliable.
I think that we need a change of thinking. Many people know the spiritual world to be a reality just as substantial be it not as easily observable as the physical world. Psychology is considered to be science yet it deals with the human mind, which may actually be more invisible than the spiritual world. The science of psychology conducts experiments not by observing the mind directly, but by letting people tell about what goes on in their mind, or by looking at people's behavior. The observations made in psychological experiments usually are based on indirect observations, just the same as we could need to conduct experiments to detail the observations of what certain people can tell us about the spiritual world.
Not each person would be able to make clear observations of the spiritual world. But how many people are capable of giving adequate descriptions of what goes on in their mind?
I cannot see any principled reason why there could not be developed a science of the spiritual reality. It may be difficult to do so and certain people may need to be trained to get more experienced in observing the spiritual reality. Also in physical science, observers often need much training before they can read the instruments well.
Of course, it won't be easy to convince the 'scientific' community of what I wrote above. Many of them have a materialistic leaning and a strong faith that God and the spiritual world would not exist. But why bother too much about them? The main reason that they don't believe in a spiritual reality is either because they have been misinformed or because their spiritual senses, their instruments to detect the spiritual reality, don't work very well. These people should not be our guiding teachers but they should rather be seen as those in need of more education. I am sure that this last line will anger many 'scientists' if they read it, but so be it.
Comments
- Question: Do you think they will succeed with this WRIST project anytime soon? (The WRIST project is an attempt to make a machine that can communicate with the spirit world.) What needs to be done for that to happen. What if indeed we could develop such a machine that can look into the spiritual world? Would that not melt away the skepticism and disbelief?
I don't know how quickly they can succeed with the WRIST project. According to my logic it would need accomplishments in three significant stages. The first is detection of the spiritual signals. The second is transforming them into physical stimuli. The third is to picture them or make them audible to our physical senses. How do you adequately detect spiritual signals with physical instruments? It needs a spiritual entity. The transforming of stimuli has to be in the realm of energies.
What do we see in the spiritual world? It is not like in the physical world. Even a spirit in the spiritual world can only see what he is familiar with. For example, certain energy channels in the human physical body can be seen from spirit world. But there are many, many thousands in the body. You never see them all at once, you only see one or two that for some reason your attention is brought to. It is a process that interlinks with the mind and with the personal knowledge of a spirit.
If successful, would this change the mind of people? It would surely do this for some people. I think this all is a process. The belief in the spiritual reality increases through many avenues and 'physical' evidence would only make out a tiny pathway of that.
Skeptics will say that there is no proof that pictures or sounds really came from the spiritual world. There is hardly a way to confirm that, so I am doubtful about the impact on the scientific community. There exist robots in spirit world. What the WRIST project tries to accomplish, I think, is to make an instrument or body for such robots.
- Question: What about starting up a science of the spiritual reality?
I would definitely support a science of the spiritual reality. It would however need a fundamental change of the definition of science to start with. Let me give you an example. Science is based on statistics. If a medicine helps for let's say 90 % of the people, they would find that an acceptable medicine. Does that help the 10 % who might be better off with another medicine? Or even the one person who has a different mentality and life style altogether? I would say that the subjective reality has to be included into the scientific field.
Only if we understand the importance of one individual, it will be possible to renew science. If scientists acknowledge the validity of truth that may exist for only one person, they will also be open to acknowledge the existence of God.
Science is primarily a way of thinking to exclude God from our reality. That is what has to change and that's why I think this is so important.
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