Is Science Compatible with Mysticism?

[Valjean]

Methodologically: not compatable, but as some here have pointed out, science is beginning to discover a universe peculiarly similar to the reality described -- as best they could in conventional language -- by mystics from time immemorial.

Are the mystics, in their trances, actually directly perceiving quantum Reality?

 

[atanu]

If I may offer an alternative view:

......that as our tests of Nature accumulate and grow more ingenious, the way Nature "merely appears" will represent the way Nature "actually IS" with ever increasing accuracy.

Mysticism cannot help us here, because mysticism suffers from the same limitation as science, without enjoying its advantages.

Your alternative view, IMO, is not correct since the scientific method is of mind and to the mystic, the mind is the veil that covers the truth.

Of course, this is what happens when some seek support for teachings of Veda or of Buddha from science. They are simply superimposing another layer of so-called truth (QM in this case) on the pristine untainted mind.

 

[godnotgod]

If I may offer an alternative view:

Consider the fact that matter is composed of atoms, and living things are composed of dividing cells. This fact--revealed by scientific, not mystical inquiry--is closer to "what the universe actually IS" than it is to "outward appearances". It would be more accurate to call it the former, (although it wouldn't be entirely wrong to call it the latter, either).

Of course, in the strictest sense you are correct that science "merely" tells us about how the universe appears. For example, we can never know for sure if matter is actually a perfectly continuous medium, even though it "appears" to be composed of tiny atoms according to the results of a vast number of ingenious tests. But even though we can never know with perfect certainty, it is reasonable to expect that as our tests of Nature accumulate and grow more ingenious, the way Nature "merely appears" will represent the way Nature "actually IS" with ever increasing accuracy.

Mysticism cannot help us here, because mysticism suffers from the same limitation as science, without enjoying its advantages. Like science, mysticism cannot distinguish appearances from reality with certainty. Mysticism can only make its proponents feel certain that they have accomplished this distinction. Is the universe "really" all One, as claimed/felt/dreamed about by the mystic, or does it "merely appear" that way to him? And yet unlike science, mysticism lacks the advantage of being able to make progress on such questions by self-correction and ever-improving accuracy.

Consider finally this notion--popular among mystics--that everything is One. Everything is not Two, or Five Hundred Trillion, mind--it has to be One. How mystics were able to rule out all other possibilities and arrive with such confidence at this figure, is unclear. It seems to be their first, and therefore last, guess. But in science it turned out differently. Science once supported the aesthetically-pleasing notion that matter is perfect and continuous--or all One, if you like. But science was able to realize this was merely an appearance, and perhaps a bias of the human mind. It turns out matter is composed of innumerable tiny pieces, and imperfectly arranged and jiggling pieces, at that. So the evidence furnished by Nature overcame the prejudices of human minds, and drove science to this revised and improved conclusion, and revealed a profound truth of Nature which was previously hidden by superficial appearances. Science thus succeeded in doing, to everyone's satisfaction, what mysticism can only pretend to do, to the satisfaction of the mystic alone.

The problem with your analogy is that you are viewing mysticism through the lens of the rational, thinking mind. Mystics do not arrive at their view through conceptual thought, as science does. When a mystic says that everything is One, he sees and experiences that Reality directly. In other words, he experiences that Oneness directly through his own being. There is no mistake about the distinction between appearances and Reality in the view of the mystic, because it is not a personal view, as you imply; it is a universal view. The mystic's view is not a conditioned one, as you also imply; it is unconditioned. It just sees things as they are, and as they are is NOT as science erroneously concludes: that atoms, for example, are 'composed of innumerable tiny pieces'. In fact, Einstein concluded that matter simply does not exist; that what we think of as 'matter' is actually energy:

“Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter.”

Max Planck took it further:

"All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter"

...and the Hindus even further, as, for them, everything in the universe is the godhead playing all the parts. In other words, everything is conscious, but it is a consciousness in the act of divine play, or lila, in which a cosmic game of Hide and Seek is being played out in all the forms of maya; the 'material' universe is not real; it is an appearance, but one which most of us do not detect as such, because our minds have been conditioned to see 'reality' a certain way, and that way is through the filter of mind, which creates Time, Space, and Causation. Once the facade is detected by the awakened mind, the true nature of what we only thought to be reality becomes apparent. This commonly arrived at insight is pretty well known in the world of mystics, an insight arrived at independently of each other, all around the globe, and throughout history.

Really the whole point here is this: that science, with its analytical and divisive methodology, for all that it is worth, is to place the the cart ahead of the horse in terms of understanding the nature of Reality. Both Yeshu and Buddha have made a point of this. What both have told us is that we mistake the description of reality for reality itself. Facts alone are not what Reality is. What is required is a state of illumination first before facts can be understood in their proper context. The thinking mind must be upended, so to speak, so that a transformation takes place, in which one sees that what one thought to be, is not what actually is. The rational mind thinks the world to be composed of separate 'things', because that is how it makes 'sense' of a world it does not understand, and it does not understand because the mind itself is conditioned and illusory. Therefore, mind itself must be transcended, so that pure conscious attention is all that remains. It is this pure conscious attention that is Reality itself.

I think this last statement corroborates what atanu just said about mind.

Paradox

"God is not the root of contradiction, but God is the simplicity itself prior to every root."
Nicholas of Cusa

 

[godnotgod]

Consider finally this notion--popular among mystics--that everything is One. Everything is not Two, or Five Hundred Trillion, mind--it has to be One. How mystics were able to rule out all other possibilities and arrive with such confidence at this figure, is unclear. It seems to be their first, and therefore last, guess. But in science it turned out differently. Science once supported the aesthetically-pleasing notion that matter is perfect and continuous--or all One, if you like. But science was able to realize this was merely an appearance, and perhaps a bias of the human mind. It turns out matter is composed of innumerable tiny pieces, and imperfectly arranged and jiggling pieces, at that. So the evidence furnished by Nature overcame the prejudices of human minds, and drove science to this revised and improved conclusion, and revealed a profound truth of Nature which was previously hidden by superficial appearances. Science thus succeeded in doing, to everyone's satisfaction, what mysticism can only pretend to do, to the satisfaction of the mystic alone.

Science will never attain a true understanding of the nature of Reality as long as it pursues the path of dissection and analysis. Neither was its conclusion 'improved' nor what Nature revealed 'profound'; on the contrary, it has moved further away from what the true nature of Reality is. Science fails to understand the indivisibility of matter, energy, and space.

"Now Swami Vivekananda's statement that:

'the Universe is the Absolute seen through the screen of time, space and causation '

allows us to get some interesting information, albeit in negative terms, about what he calls the Absolute. Since it is not in time, it cannot be changing. Change takes place only in time. And since it is not in space, it must be undivided, because dividedness and separation occur only in space. And since it is therefore one and undivided, it must also be infinite, since there is no "other" to limit it. Now "changeless," "infinite," and "undivided" are negative statements, but they will suffice. We can trace the physics of our Universe from these three negative statements. If we don't see the Absolute as what it is, we'll see it as something else. If we don't see it as changeless, infinite, and undivided, we'll see it as changing, finite, and divided, since in this case there is no other else. There is no other way to mistake the changeless except as changing. So we see a Universe which is changing all the time, made of minuscule particles, and divided into atoms."

http://quanta-gaia.org/dobson/EquationsOfMaya.html

 

[Mr Spinkles]

godnotgod,

You claim the mystic sees things as they are. How do you know? Suppose, hypothetically, that things are actually different from the way the mystic sees them in his mind. How do you rule out this possibility? It's quite suspicious to claim that a scientist, scrutinizing Nature carefully with his eyes open, sees mere appearances, while a mystic, letting his imagination run wild with his eyes closed, sees Nature as it really is. Isn't the opposite outcome more likely?

Also, please provide credible sources for those quotes attributed to Einstein and Planck. There are many phony quotes floating around about "vibrations" etc. which are attributed to great physicists, and I suspect you may have accidentally confused these for genuine quotes.

 

[Straw Dog]

Your alternative view, IMO, is not correct since the scientific method is of mind and to the mystic, the mind is the veil that covers the truth.

Actually, there are iniatives in the postpositivist school attempting to renovate the scientific project. One major facet is eliminating the assumption of observer/observed. So the scientific method can be pursued without strict mind-object duality while maintaining and enhancing physical descriptions of reality.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Mystics have always hijacked physics concepts to make their feelings/impressions/imaginings about Nature seem more credible. In the 1800s magnetism was the latest thing in physics; it was weird and new and exciting. Therefore, mystics sought to find confirmation of their ideas in magnetism. Magnetism is strange, mysticism is strange, therefore magnetism has something to do with mysticism. Magnetism is an invisible, far-reaching influence, therefore the human mind must have an invisible, far-reaching influence on the entire universe. This is just wild and unjustified extrapolation. Then it was waves and "vibrations". Today it's quantum mechanics.

For the record, most physicists do not take seriously a meaningful connection between quantum mechanics, and mysticism. It's just like the Christian myth about the creation of the universe: it's a very imaginative story which happened, by chance, to be right about a detail or two confirmed by science (the universe isn't infinitely old). It's the same with mysticism: yes there's something called entanglement in physics. No that does not mean that you are currently entangled with every object in the universe in such a way that you and everything are One, or that by closing your eyes and thinking hard you can change the status of the Moon or the course of events in the universe, or that you can exist in two distant locations at once, etc.

And yes physicists are aware of the observer/observed problem. It's not about consciousness per se. The "observer" does not have to be conscious. Usually when physicists say "observer" it is shorthand for any (unconscious) physical system, which is affected by its interaction with another system and therefore can be thought of as taking a "measurement". Again mystics want to extrapolate this and say everything is conscious. I am a firm believer that for 'X' to be meaningful you must be able to define what you mean by 'not X'. Mystics seem to take the opposite approach--everything is consciousness, everything is One, everything is an illusion. There's no room for messier, less aesthetically-pleasing possibilities.

 

[Willamena]

Mystics have always hijacked physics concepts to make their feelings/impressions/imaginings about Nature seem more credible. In the 1800s magnetism was the latest thing in physics; it was weird and new and exciting. Therefore, mystics sought to find confirmation of their ideas in magnetism. Magnetism is strange, mysticism is strange, therefore magnetism has something to do with mysticism. Magnetism is an invisible, far-reaching influence, therefore the human mind must have an invisible, far-reaching influence on the entire universe. This is just wild and unjustified extrapolation. Then it was waves and "vibrations". Today it's quantum mechanics.

For the record, most physicists do not take seriously a meaningful connection between quantum mechanics, and mysticism. It's just like the Christian myth about the creation of the universe: it's a very imaginative story which happened, by chance, to be right about a detail or two confirmed by science (the universe isn't infinitely old). It's the same with mysticism: yes there's something called entanglement in physics. No that does not mean that you are currently entangled with every object in the universe in such a way that you and everything are One, or that by closing your eyes and thinking hard you can change the status of the Moon or the course of events in the universe, or that you can exist in two distant locations at once, etc.

And yes physicists are aware of the observer/observed problem. It's not about consciousness per se. The "observer" does not have to be conscious. Usually when physicists say "observer" it is shorthand for any (unconscious) physical system, which is affected by its interaction with another system and therefore can be thought of as taking a "measurement". Again mystics want to extrapolate this and say everything is conscious. I am a firm believer that for 'X' to be meaningful you must be able to define what you mean by 'not X'. Mystics seem to take the opposite approach--everything is consciousness, everything is One, everything is an illusion. There's no room for messier, less aesthetically-pleasing possibilities.

Mysticism, like magic, will have a different face depending on the practitioner and their grasp of things. It would be unhelpful to lump them all into one shoe.

 

[Willamena]

It seems that today science offers much more radical philosophies than the most mystical branches of eastern religions.
String theory, quantom mechanics, and the quest for the Higgs boson.

And just like the mystical branches of eastern religions, only accessible to a few who are capable of understanding them.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Mysticism, like magic, will have a different face depending on the practitioner and their grasp of things. It would be unhelpful to lump them all into one shoe.

Good point. The sort of mysticism I would respect would be the sort that is honest about its limitations: it is about a way of perceiving, or a way of exploring mental experiences. A mental experience does not necessarily tell you anything about how the universe 'really' is. Feeling at One with the universe might be a great feeling, or an interesting or helpful way to think about the world. That does not imply it is an accurate description of the universe--and certainly not the most accurate possible description. It does not imply that all distinctions are illusory, that 'really' you, a lump of coal, a blade of grass, a tapeworm, the planet Jupiter, Hustler magazine, etc. are all the same.

 

[Willamena]

Good point. The sort of mysticism I would respect would be the sort that is honest about its limitations: it is about a way of perceiving, or a way of exploring mental experiences. A mental experience does not necessarily tell you anything about how the universe 'really' is. Feeling at One with the universe might be a great feeling, or an interesting or helpful way to think about the world. That does not imply it is an accurate description of the universe--and certainly not the most accurate possible description. It does not imply that all distinctions are illusory, that 'really' you, a lump of coal, a blade of grass, a tapeworm, the planet Jupiter, Hustler magazine, etc. are all the same.

Very often, mysticism takes the form that mental/non-mental is an unhelpful or unskillful distinction, such that the way the universe is is not separate from the "mental experience" of the way the universe is. To Westernize it, "there is no ontology without epistemology" (lamely quoting myself).

It's not that they feel one with the universe, but that they actually are.

 

[Windwalker]

Good point. The sort of mysticism I would respect would be the sort that is honest about its limitations: it is about a way of perceiving, or a way of exploring mental experiences. A mental experience does not necessarily tell you anything about how the universe 'really' is. Feeling at One with the universe might be a great feeling, or an interesting or helpful way to think about the world. That does not imply it is an accurate description of the universe--and certainly not the most accurate possible description. It does not imply that all distinctions are illusory, that 'really' you, a lump of coal, a blade of grass, a tapeworm, the planet Jupiter, Hustler magazine, etc. are all the same.

I'm glad this was pointed out to you as I was about to jump all over you for lumping all mystics under the pseudo-science folks that are mistakenly called mystics in popular culture. Here's the thing you are not understanding. When the mystic, I mean those who enter into deep states of consciousness through meditation (you may include me as one), are not conceptualizing anything at all. It is not running with your imagination. In fact it is specifically, and deliberately moving beyond any meditated experience of the world through symbols. What is reported, what is described as gognotgod stated, is universal in what it says, regardless of culture or time, independently. We all say that that is the true Reality, and that how we see the world is an illusion. The illusion being that we assume, this reflects reality. But what we find through the mystical experience is that the nature of reality, rather the way we experience reality, is inherently flawed, and as such is not-reality.

None of this has jack-diddly to do with gaining knowledge of Quantum Mechanics, or the circumference of the earth, or the true speed of light, or any such utter nonsense. It has to do with our mental perception of truth, our mental perceptions of reality. What those perceptions are, that is the illusion to us, is nothing more than two-dimensional mental models. The mistake is to see those models as representing the "big picture", even if you go so far as to say M-theory is the theory of "everything". It is not the theory of everything at all as it excludes the human mind and its vast and complex landscapes. And furthermore, beyond the conceptual mind, beyond thought, consciousness itself simply is - unmediated. Then in this state the world, the material world, the world of thought and interpretation is seen as it is. You are experiencing Reality, which includes all these models we use to navigate the world with.

Now where in there anywhere, do you hear that to speak of Reality from the mystical Realization, as some sort of usurping of the role of investigative research into physics? You don't, and you won't, expect by those who have no understanding of mystical experiences. Although, occasionally you will find those who may have genuine mystical experience sometimes try to "validate" it using things like QM and whatnot, but I feel that is a deep mistake on their part. I could get into the reasons why, but that's beyond the scope of this. Suffice to say that those who say that mystical experience gives specific knowledge of physics are going way outside what they should.

I will certainly grant however, that one may garner a certain "meta-view" that may lead to investigate things about the world that go beyond the conventional understanding. But this is more because the mind, in the mystical practice, breaks down the normal constructs that prevent us from seeing beyond them. The mind actually becomes allow to be creative in itself beyond the boxes that language and concepts impose on the mind. It's not magical insight, per se, but more allowing the brain to do what it is capable of, supercharged, so to speak.

 

[godnotgod]

Good point. The sort of mysticism I would respect would be the sort that is honest about its limitations:

Because the mystic's focus is not on the appearance of the world, but on it's source, that they do not come up with the kind of factual detail about the world that science does, and in that respect, they are perfectly honest about those limitations, but that is only because factual knowledge is not their focus. However, a realized mystic understands more about the nature of those facts than a scientist can.

it is about a way of perceiving, or a way of exploring mental experiences.

As I already pointed out, you are looking at mysticism through the lens of the rational mind, and so erroneously conclude that it is a mental exercise. You ignored that I and atanu pointed out that mind and its machinations are the obstacle to the mystical experience. Both must first be stilled. The mystical experience is NOT thinking.

How it is determined that the world is composed of appearances is a function of seeing, not thinking. We might call meditation a method of vision correction.

A mental experience does not necessarily tell you anything about how the universe 'really' is.

Exactly my point. So why is science pursuing this path? I suppose it thinks that, via the accumulation of vast amounts of factual knowledge, there will be an 'aha' moment, where it all comes together, not understanding that the universe is already together. That, in fact, is precisely why it is called a 'uni-verse'.

Feeling at One with the universe might be a great feeling, or an interesting or helpful way to think about the world. That does not imply it is an accurate description of the universe--and certainly not the most accurate possible description.

If the universe is not One, then please show me at which point it is divided.

It does not imply that all distinctions are illusory, that 'really' you, a lump of coal, a blade of grass, a tapeworm, the planet Jupiter, Hustler magazine, etc. are all the same.

I think you have a basic misunderstanding about what mystics are saying when they say 'all is One'.

"According to this law [of Interdependent Origination], nothing has independent, permanent, or absolute existence. Everything is part of a limitless web of interconnections and undergoes a continual process of transformation. Every appearance arises from complex causes and conditions, and in turn combines with others to produce countless effects."

Dharma Dictionary - Interdependent Origination


So you see, mystics are not saying that 'everything is the same', since transformation occurs, but that everything is interconnected. However, the source of everything is undifferentiated, just as the source of all ocean wave-forms is the formless sea. Yet, though everything is 'different', that difference is only apparent. Further, everything is of the same substance, which is energy, in differing forms and wavelengths, just as all waves are composed of the same substance as the sea from which they emerge: water.

 

[godnotgod]

Very often, mysticism takes the form that mental/non-mental is an unhelpful or unskillful distinction, such that the way the universe is is not separate from the "mental experience" of the way the universe is. To Westernize it, "there is no ontology without epistemology" (lamely quoting myself).

It's not that they feel one with the universe, but that they actually are.

Good point. Westerners are so accustomed to nurturing an "objective" viewpoint so that they have come to assume that observer and observed are separate, forgetting that they themselves are 100% integrated into the universe itself. Deepak Chopra put it this way:

"You are the universe looking at itself through its own eyes".

 

[godnotgod]

Mystics have always hijacked physics concepts to make their feelings/impressions/imaginings about Nature seem more credible. In the 1800s magnetism was the latest thing in physics; it was weird and new and exciting. Therefore, mystics sought to find confirmation of their ideas in magnetism. Magnetism is strange, mysticism is strange, therefore magnetism has something to do with mysticism. Magnetism is an invisible, far-reaching influence, therefore the human mind must have an invisible, far-reaching influence on the entire universe. This is just wild and unjustified extrapolation. Then it was waves and "vibrations". Today it's quantum mechanics.

Mystics do not need to seek 'confirmation of their ideas'. Their experience itself is confirmation of the nature of Reality. Ideas do not enter into it, because then you would be talking about doctrine, which requires belief, neither of which is part of the mystical experience. Not being part of the experience, confirmation of the validity of doctrine is not called for. Doctrine, at some point, requires either defense or offense. The mystic requires neither to just see things as they are. Having said that, it is quite true that, when new scientific discoveries emerge which coincide with mystical experience, the mystic points this out, simply because there is no means of rational proof of his experience that can be demonstrated to the ordinary man. The only means by which such experience can be validated is for the ordinary man to experience it for himself. In that experience, there is nothing to prove, nothing to believe in, nothing to 'figure out', nothing to defend or die for. There is only this immediate, living Reality within which you find yourself at the present moment, and that is everything.

 

[atanu]

Good point. The sort of mysticism I would respect would be the sort that is honest about its limitations: .

OTOH, I respect scientists who know about the scope of their knowledge, built upon an ego "I", which itself is an artifact of mind-sense activity. And those who know the illusion of this basic mind-sense created "I".

 

[atanu]

Actually, there are iniatives in the postpositivist school attempting to renovate the scientific project. One major facet is eliminating the assumption of observer/observed. So the scientific method can be pursued without strict mind-object duality while maintaining and enhancing physical descriptions of reality.

It is an impossibility. In any externalised view of mind-senses the prerequisite is subject-object division and whose product is thought-word. OTOH, the pristine Reality is contentless.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

I'm glad this was pointed out to you as I was about to jump all over you for lumping all mystics under the pseudo-science folks that are mistakenly called mystics in popular culture. Here's the thing you are not understanding. When the mystic, I mean those who enter into deep states of consciousness through meditation (you may include me as one), are not conceptualizing anything at all. It is not running with your imagination. In fact it is specifically, and deliberately moving beyond any meditated experience of the world through symbols. What is reported, what is described as gognotgod stated, is universal in what it says, regardless of culture or time, independently. We all say that that is the true Reality, and that how we see the world is an illusion. The illusion being that we assume, this reflects reality. But what we find through the mystical experience is that the nature of reality, rather the way we experience reality, is inherently flawed, and as such is not-reality.

None of this has jack-diddly to do with gaining knowledge of Quantum Mechanics, or the circumference of the earth, or the true speed of light, or any such utter nonsense. It has to do with our mental perception of truth, our mental perceptions of reality. What those perceptions are, that is the illusion to us, is nothing more than two-dimensional mental models. The mistake is to see those models as representing the "big picture", even if you go so far as to say M-theory is the theory of "everything". It is not the theory of everything at all as it excludes the human mind and its vast and complex landscapes. And furthermore, beyond the conceptual mind, beyond thought, consciousness itself simply is - unmediated. Then in this state the world, the material world, the world of thought and interpretation is seen as it is. You are experiencing Reality, which includes all these models we use to navigate the world with.

Now where in there anywhere, do you hear that to speak of Reality from the mystical Realization, as some sort of usurping of the role of investigative research into physics? You don't, and you won't, expect by those who have no understanding of mystical experiences. Although, occasionally you will find those who may have genuine mystical experience sometimes try to "validate" it using things like QM and whatnot, but I feel that is a deep mistake on their part. I could get into the reasons why, but that's beyond the scope of this. Suffice to say that those who say that mystical experience gives specific knowledge of physics are going way outside what they should.

I will certainly grant however, that one may garner a certain "meta-view" that may lead to investigate things about the world that go beyond the conventional understanding. But this is more because the mind, in the mystical practice, breaks down the normal constructs that prevent us from seeing beyond them. The mind actually becomes allow to be creative in itself beyond the boxes that language and concepts impose on the mind. It's not magical insight, per se, but more allowing the brain to do what it is capable of, supercharged, so to speak.

Hi Windwalker,

Thanks for the clarification. I appreciate the diversity of those who call themselves mystics. Please note that my previous posts were a response to godnotgod, whose comments do indeed usurp the role of investigative research into physics--although perhaps that was not his intent.

If I understand you correctly (and I am not at all sure that I do), the kind of mysticism you promote is centered around deep meditation. When people meditate deeply, as I understand, they often lose their sense of self or separateness from the rest of the universe. What you seem to be saying, is that anything we experience outside of that sort of deep meditative state, including everything we perceive by our senses, and including everything we learn from scientific inquiry, is an illusion.

Have I understood you more or less correctly?

 

[Mr Spinkles]

godnotgod,

Please provide credible sources for the quotes you attributed to Einstein and Planck. It's common for quotes about mystical/religious ideas to get falsely attributed to great physicists, and I suspect you have accidentally perpetuated this. It happens that I'm a physicist-in-training, and I read a biography called Einstein and Religion, and I own the Yale Book of Quotations, so I have a plausible intuition about phony Einstein quotes.

And for goodness' sake please don't quote Deepak Chopra ... ... I couldn't get past page 10 or so of his book, and I tried mightily. He is truly a master of appearing to say a lot, while actually saying very little. Case in point (with all due respect):

Westerners are so accustomed to nurturing an "objective" viewpoint so that they have come to assume that observer and observed are separate, forgetting that they themselves are 100% integrated into the universe itself.

First, of course observers/humans are a part of the universe. That's not a new insight and we couldn't pretend to know it is true without science. Scientists separate observers from the observed as a useful approximation--we know observers aren't absolutely, 100% separable from the rest of the universe, we're just saying they are mostly separable, within some level of approximation. And when this approximation becomes very inaccurate (as happens in quantum mechanics) we accept that and try to develop a more accurate understanding. Using science. Not mysticism.

Second, you are illustrating the problem I have with (some) mystics: you get carried away with yourself and tend towards a perfect, absolute picture of the universe without considering that a less perfect, more mixed picture might be more accurate. Granted that humans are integrated with the universe, but are you sure humans are 100% integrated? The truth is that what happens to a typical human at this moment has essentially nothing to do with what will happen in most of the rest of the universe. Even if a nuclear holocaust caused the extinction of our entire species right now, nothing significant would change on Jupiter, or in the Andromeda galaxy, or 99.99...% of the universe. So, in that sense, at this moment, it is more accurate to say that humans are 0% integrated with most of the universe, and only come close to 100% integration with their immediate surroundings. Of course, you can always find some tortuous path to connect all the dots .... for example, yes long ago the matter in Andromeda and the matter in human beings was a single hot plasma in the first instants of the Big Bang. But is the route connecting these things more direct, or more convoluted? And is the strength of that connection 100%, all the time, or is it weak and intermittent? Herein lies the difference between pretending to understand the relationships of things in the universe, and actually understanding them.

If the universe is not One, then please show me at which point it is divided.

Is this a trick question? For starters: leptons vs. hadrons, ions vs. cations, north vs. south magnetic poles, my DNA sequence vs. yours, Earth vs. Mercury, the Milky Way vs. Andromeda.

I know what you are going to say .... everything in the universe is energy. Okay. And everything in the alphabet is a letter. And everything in the Sun's atmosphere is a plasma. Etc. You seem to want to say that this sort of insight (1) cannot be appreciated by science alone, and (2) represents the absolute pinnacle of understanding. But the fact that everything is energy is well-understood and appreciated in science. And furthermore that is only the most basic, rudimentary beginning of an understanding of the universe. The pinnacle would be understanding what all the forms of energy are, how they differ, how they can (and cannot) interact with each other, etc.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Mystics do not need to seek 'confirmation of their ideas'. Their experience itself is confirmation of the nature of Reality. Ideas do not enter into it, because then you would be talking about doctrine, which requires belief, neither of which is part of the mystical experience. Not being part of the experience, confirmation of the validity of doctrine is not called for. Doctrine, at some point, requires either defense or offense. The mystic requires neither to just see things as they are. Having said that, it is quite true that, when new scientific discoveries emerge which coincide with mystical experience, the mystic points this out, simply because there is no means of rational proof of his experience that can be demonstrated to the ordinary man. The only means by which such experience can be validated is for the ordinary man to experience it for himself. In that experience, there is nothing to prove, nothing to believe in, nothing to 'figure out', nothing to defend or die for. There is only this immediate, living Reality within which you find yourself at the present moment, and that is everything.

Emphasis added. I don't deny the experience of the mystic is real. But how can you be sure of the parts underlined? Let me be very specific: as I said before, for 'X' to be meaningful, you must explain what 'NOT X' would mean. Here you claim that a mystic's experience 'confirms the nature of Reality', and 'sees things as they are'. For this claim to be meaningful, you must explain what it would mean (hypothetically) for a mystic's experience to 'NOT confirm the nature of Reality' and 'NOT see things as they are'.

What I want to know, is what would it mean for those 'NOT' statements to be true, and how do you rule out the possibility that they are true with respect to mysticism? For example, what would it mean for the universe to be 'NOT One'? If we lived in such a hypothetical universe, is it conceivable that mystics might nevertheless perceive the universe to be 'One'? If so, how do we rule out this possibility?