Is Science Compatible with Mysticism?

[atanu]

Well, DUH! That is about as meaningful as saying there are no species of birds, as when taken altogether, there are only Birds.

Is there such a thing as a Mystic Fundamentalist?

For three years now, I have not seen anything of value from beyond the light, except such acerbic attacks.:sorry1:

In the same way, how can a Perfect reality give rise to an imperfect reality? In theory, anything created/sustained by a perfect reality would also be perfect - in its own way.

Ya. When a firebrand is rotated fast, a perfect circle of light is formed. Some know only the circle and not the firebrand. Those who know the firebrand can create squares or stars or anything of light.

 

[YmirGF]

For three years now, I have not seen anything of value from beyond the light, except such acerbic attacks.:sorry1:

Human animals do have a tendency to see what they want.

Ya. When a firebrand is rotated fast, a perfect circle of light is formed. Some know only the circle and not the firebrand. Those who know the firebrand can create squares or stars or anything of light.

A flawed analogy is probably not the best retort, Atanu. Just sayin'

 

[godnotgod]

Well, DUH! That is about as meaningful as saying there are no species of birds, as when taken altogether, there are only Birds.

One Light, though the lamps be Many.

To theorize multiple universes is not to say that Reality is Two or more, as Mr. Sprinkles imagines. It is One, regardless of how many universes there are.

There are many species of birds, but they are still together with the universe as one. 'Separation' is only an illusion. Everything is interdependent with everything else in existence. Is that so difficult to see?

 

[atanu]

Human animals do have a tendency to see what they want.

A flawed analogy is probably not the best retort, Atanu. Just sayin'

Again Ymir, if you cared to go through your posts mindfully, you will surely see such conclusions or acerbic comments, without any explanation. May be my comprehesion is deficient. May be.

 

[Willamena]

Really? Isn't maya the veil over true nature, hiding it from view? It appears that you are presenting 'true nature' as opposite/relative to maya, but true nature is the Absolute, and has no opposite. How can the illusion that the Absolute projects 'allow' the Absolute?

Depends on what you mean by "true nature." Does the veil have a true nature?

Maya isn't illusion in the sense of a falseness that covers truth. Maya is illusion in the sense that there is truth vs falseness; in the sense that there is absolute vs relative; in the sense that there is maya vs atman. I know you know this.

It would seem to me though that any truth maya is veiling is maya. As form does not differ from emptiness, maya does not differ from atman. When we pull back the curtain, the man behind it is us.

 

[Willamena]

I gave examples in that post. I guess I wasn't clear enough (hardly a suprise as that's par for the course).

I'm sorry, I guess I missed it. You continued on with, "Other combinations aren't so strict..." and I assumed you had just broached the subject. It caught my interest because the "particular combinations of words" you had listed were all metaphor.

In "traditional" grammar as well as in formal/generative grammars there are words, and there are the rules/syntax. Simplistically, any linguistic structure can be broken down into its constituent (and atomistic) parts: the words...

For almost all linguists during the latter half of the 20th century, a central goal in the analysis of a language was to find out what the syntactical rules were such that, when combined with the "grammatical" properties of the words, we get grammatical structure...

Here's an example that both addresses your question and gives the background for the different approach to language used now:

"birds of a feather flock together"
*"birds of a feather flocked together"

The structure of that phrase cannot be explained in terms of words and syntax...

If I remember correctly, Doppleganger was getting at something different, though, than explaining sentence or phrase structure. He was talking about an unconscious process by which we take a conscious chunk of the world and make it a referent. If there's no rules by which we do that we could not learn to do it, but we do learn to do it from our early childhood, so there are rules, and there is a structure by which we are programmed to learn langauges by our social contacts, and in turn program others. That is what is "essential" and "inherent," a structure ordered in thought.

I'm not going to defend the idea, but to note that if you search his posts you may find more, if the topic interests you.

Thank you for the detailed response.

 

[atanu]

The first problem I see is the notion of "inherent grammatical structure" which orders words. The second is the equating of categorization to linguistic units ("the essential structure of language by which all things are categorized").

The idea that grammar or syntax are "rules" that organize "words", and that the two are seperate (one being the rules and structures which allow certain words to combine in certain ways, the other being the words) is not really how language works ...

I think you have missed the point in two ways.

1. Reality is something....., but we are forced to arrange the observations of QM etc., in the framework of a discretized sensed universe wherein objects are already labelled ... by the power of awareness (whatever it is). As we do not know what awareness is we cannot also say what the word is.

2. There is awareness at the root of word. The awareness only categorizes etc. It draws out a coherent picture out of randomness.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

No. Never mind what I think; I want to focus on what the theory says. The theory states that they are separate, correct? How is that determined to be the case by those who theorize it as such?

For clarity, I was not discussing any established scientific theory, I was just considering a hypothetical situation in which the universe is "Not One". This can mean whatever you want it to mean, I came up with one imaginative possibility but you are free to imagine others. But it must be possible to attach some meaning to a hypothetical "Not One" universe, or else it is equally meaningless to say the universe is "One".

Personally, I would call at least two different situations "separate universes":

(1) Suppose can detect another universe (e.g. maybe it appears in some portion of the sky) but nothing in our universe interacts with it, and vice-versa. Like a hologram, this other universe passes right through everything in our universe without affecting it, although we can see it.

(2) Alternatively, we could imagine an even more 100% "separate" universe which is not even be detectable from within this universe. The two (or more) universes would have, we imagine, their own separate spacetime, matter, energy, etc. and there is zero matter/energy/information exchanged between the two. If this were the case, then by definition, no one living in universe A could know anything about universe B, including whether or not universe B exists. Physicists admit this, and therefore they cannot rule out the possibility of such universes. It seems to me that mystics, too, must be humble enough to admit they cannot rule out this possibility no matter how much they meditate and no matter how many times they repeat "all is One". The question you posed earlier is apt: which view is narrower?

 

[godnotgod]

Depends on what you mean by "true nature." Does the veil have a true nature?

Maya isn't illusion in the sense of a falseness that covers truth. Maya is illusion in the sense that there is truth vs falseness; in the sense that there is absolute vs relative; in the sense that there is maya vs atman. I know you know this.

It would seem to me though that any truth maya is veiling is maya. As form does not differ from emptiness, maya does not differ from atman. When we pull back the curtain, the man behind it is us.

What is behind 'us'?

You have made the absolute relative. Absolute means there is no 'other'.

re: 'atman': the Buddha rejected both the materialist and the eternalist views as extreme. 'atman' is only a concept of the eternalists. This was one of the game changers from Hinduism to Buddhism.

 

[atanu]

...
Personally, I would call at least two different situations "separate universes":

(1) Suppose can detect another universe (e.g. maybe it appears in some portion of the sky) but nothing in our universe interacts with it, and vice-versa. Like a hologram, this other universe passes right through everything in our universe without affecting it, although we can see it.

(2) Alternatively, we could imagine an even more 100% "separate" universe which is not even be detectable from within this universe. The two (or more) universes would have, we imagine, their own separate spacetime, matter, energy, etc. and there is zero matter/energy/information exchanged between the two. If this were the case, then by definition, no one living in universe A could know anything about universe B, including whether or not universe B exists. Physicists admit this, and therefore they cannot rule out the possibility of such universes. It seems to me that mystics, too, must be humble enough to admit they cannot rule out this possibility no matter how much they meditate and no matter how many times they repeat "all is One". The question you posed earlier is apt: which view is narrower?

Under both scenarios only one awareness is involved. Either you see two universes or you see only one (and guess presence of another).

 

[Willamena]

What is behind 'us'?

What is this 'behind'?

You have made the absolute relative. Absolute means there is no 'other'.

re: 'atman': the Buddha rejected both the materialist and the eternalist views as extreme. 'atman' is only a concept of the eternalists. This was one of the game changers from Hinduism to Buddhism.

I am neither Hindu nor Buddhist, but I do favour marriages.

I have no more made the absolute relative than the relative absolute. That there is a difference between them is Maya; that there is no difference between them is Maya.

 

[YmirGF]

Under both scenarios only one awareness is involved. Either you see two universes or you see only one (and guess presence of another).

Without getting your dander up too much, Atanu, is it not also possible that this fixation on Oneness is not just a natural result of our own form of consciousness? For example, for the most part we do one task at a time, we think of one thought at a time, etc... to such a rooted form of consciousness Oneness would be a somewhat logical outcome due to the nature of our perception of reality. Could it not be an ultimate form of our preconditioned linear perspective, as that view reinforces our existing prejudiced perception? I hope that makes some sense to you. If not, I'll try to render it a bit more plainly.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Under both scenarios only one awareness is involved. Either you see two universes or you see only one (and guess presence of another).

Well first of all I don't see how you can say that, since there could be another guy living in universe B with his own separate awareness, thus resulting in more than "One" total. But let's not worry about the number of "awarenesses" (whatever that means). Let's stick to the issue we were discussing: the number of universes, and whether mysticism is capable of determining this number, or not. Do you agree with what I said about this specific issue, or not? Please note, you don't HAVE to object to everything I say, or change the subject. You don't need to feel as though agreeing with me on any minor point is somehow a defeat for Mysticism. I certainly don't see it that way.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Atanu and Godnotgod,

I notice that quantum mechanics keeps being mentioned. Could you please read the OP here? http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/science-religion/147093-demystifying-quantum-physics.html

The purpose of that OP is just to make sure we are all on the same page in terms of the kinds of things QM does (and does not) say, according to physics. It's not my opinion, it's just standard physics in textbooks and used by my colleagues who do experiments on atoms, etc. This discussion will be easier if we all understand this context.

 

[Vouthon]

I think that both science and mysticism are born from a similar premise: the drive to keep going, to keep asking for deeper answers to the mysteries of reality without giving up. This hunger for infinite answers to infinite mysteries, is surely a common springboard from which both scientific endeavour and mystical knowing arise?

Just as scientists search out with painstaking analysis the mysteries of the universe, mystics search with unending journeying for the mysteries of the Infinite.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Doppleganger was getting at something different

I suspected that might be the case, hence this:

I see the above in terms of theories about language, grammar, syntax, lexemes, etc. So I apologize for what follows, as it is not only lengthy, but is perhaps totally missing the point.

He was talking about an unconscious process by which we take a conscious chunk of the world and make it a referent. If there's no rules by which we do that we could not learn to do it, but we do learn to do it from our early childhood, so there are rules, and there is a structure by which we are programmed to learn langauges by our social contacts, and in turn program others. That is what is "essential" and "inherent," a structure ordered in thought.

I would not use the word "rules", but I would use structure.

Perhaps what I wrote was not entirely unrelated then, merely largely unrelated. What you refer to as taking "a conscious chunk of the world" I think I would call categorization. An example (to see if I'm understanding you correctly) is learning the word/concept "tree". Another is "I". My sister has twin girls who turned 2 a week or so ago. One of them often uses her name rather than "I". She does use "I", and even in mental state predicates ("I think x"), but hasn't fully understood that her name is something that others use to refer to her, but that this is because they are external.

We all (some sooner, some later) learn to do this and beyond. What Plato meant by Form or Idea (mostly using the term εἰδός/eidos, although sometimes ἰδέαι/ideai) is today "category" or "concept" for some modern philosophers and those in cognitive science whose work is related to language (e.g., guys like Pinker or cognitive linguists).

And you probably know (perhaps much better than I) how Aristotle, Kant, Saussure, Husserl, Wittgenstein, and others have dealt with the barriers set between thought/internal representation, language, and things language is meant to refer to.

Let's say we take as our starting point the pantheistic approach and determine "nature" or "God" is "the totality of all reality, unfragmented by discrete knowledge" (for shorthand, I'll be referring to this as "all that is").

If "nature" or "God" is "all that is," then of logical necessity, doesn't there have to be an underlying aspect of reality that places me in relationship to "all that is"?

So what is the device underlying all reality as I can experience it that is not itself words and that has the power to bring form to formlessness?

I propose, as I've hinted at a few times recently, that "God" is the rules and structures of grammar itself - the essential structure of language by which all things are categorized, given meaning and related to, including my own sense of self identity (the "I am" at the center of the universe of my experiences, relating to it all).

If someone were to threaten death upon a person in the cognitive sciences unless that individual summed up with one word what the cognitive sciences "are", despite their being so broad almost any field (from biblical studies to mathematics) can be a part, that word would be categorization.

At the heart of cognition is the giving of "form" to that which is an abstraction. Even Plato recognized that something like a "chair" describes many things which are not the same yet the same word is used for these. His answer was the Platonic "Ideal Form". The answer above is the numinsous/"Nature"/"God"/cosmic structure, if I understand correctly.

I freely admit I am more than a little biased here, but although I do see nature playing a role, it is neither the same nature nor the same role. The neuroimaging studies that are seldom reported in any article but which are the ones most likely to be important tend to relate to this question, and before cognitive psychology had things like fMRI or EEG, behavioral experiments related to it (and do still). One of the first lessons learned in early cog. sci. research (when the field was mainly computer scientists/mathematicians, psychologists, and philosophers) was how much we took for granted our perceptual faculties.

Trying to get a computer to recognize things as members of a category when these members look very different, such as a leapord, a house cat, and a lion, turned out to be extremely difficult. Yet my niece can do it (actually, both can, but one is more advanced with motor skills and is pretty much where she should be with verbal skill). Once again, that figure/ground discussion in this thread many posts back rears its head. Those were early ideas on the nature of visual input and categorization, both perceptual and conceptual. I "see" a picture of a landscape as a "whole" in that it is distinct from the wall or desk upon which it is mounted, but I also see the trees, rocks, mountains, and clouds in the picture as different parts of the picture rather than just a smear of colors.

I did notice your book suggestion from a few pages back, and have added it to my list. I would offer my own if I may. It is Lakoff's Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. It was published in 1987, and the author was one of several independent researchers who became the founders of cognitive linguistics. The book, however, is hardly a mere study of interest only to linguists or psychologists, as I bought my edition in Barnes & Noble a few years ago. It is extremely rare to find in a bookstore a book that is cited (especially cited numerous times) in technical literature, and rarer still to find one that is not old enough to be a classic (e.g., something by Freud). The title (which, the author remarks, is either loved or hated by feminist scholars but for the same reason) comes from the word balan. It is a word in a language indigenous to Australia which refers to a category, and more specifically one which includes women, fire, and dangerous things.

The point of the book is not that these things are similar (which is why the title is either loved or hated but always for the wrong reason). It is that we tend to believe we group similar things together because they are similar more than we actually do. What is similar between a wedding ring, a ring of smugglers, Saturn's rings, ring theory (in mathematics) and a ring leader? Conceptual prototypes and metaphor. Prototypically, a ring is basically a circle. That easily explains Saturn and jewelry, but a ring of smugglers? That is a metaphorical extension; we have abstracted from from a more central concept and applied some part of the concept "ring" to the the "circular" relationship network of smugglers (often words have more than one central concepts or prototypes). We can conceive as circular a group of people connected by goal, occupation, and behavior (to smuggle contraband, a person who smuggles contraband, and the smuggling itself, respectively). They are connected in a singular way that e.g,. a baseball team is not.

One reason, then, to understand that what gives form to the formless is something other than "Nature"/Cosmic structure itself is they different ways in which different languages do this. We have no word balan that includes women, fire, and dangerous things in the way that native speakers of Dyirbal do. For us, there is a big difference between drawing and writing, yet in ancient Greece the same word was used for both. If I am talking to someone and mention Dr. Langacker, I will usually either not use the word "doctor" or at least specify that he is a linguist. People associate "doctor" with medicine far more readily than with doctorates.

I can say "I like this house" and "I like this home", but somehow they mean very different things. I can be in any house and like it, but usually I have only one home.

I could quite literally go on until I died of starvation listing examples, so I will stop here, hoping to have shown what I meant to. The formless smears of matter that make up everything from light and air to rocks and steel are given form by thought and by language, but if it was the cosmic structure, divine mind, or nature which did so, why is it that not just concepts/words, but thought itself is differs depending on culture and langauge?

We have, I believe, an inherent ability to categorize wholes and parts, likes and unlikes, figure and ground, and other distinctions. It is partly based on the perceptual faculties that humans have as well as how different faculties are accorded different levels of importance in this process (sight, for example, is key). That much is common to humanity. It is, however, very broad and very flexible. A central reason this is so has to do with the centrality of metaphor for thought. Culture, intersubjectivity, and language use all interact such that different cultures can end up categorizing the same perceptual input quite differently. What creates structure and destroyes structure is this thing...
...all things devours
birds, beasts, trees, flowers,
gnaws iron, bites steel,
and grinds hard stones to meal
Slays kinds and ruins town
And beats high mountains down.

Time doesn't merely change the physical, or the physical forms (the perceived), but also the internal forms

Imperious Casear, dead and turned to clay
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
Oh that the earth which held the world in awe,
Should patch a wall, to expel the winter's flaw.

Thank you for the detailed response.

Thank you for using so kind a descriptor, as "detailed" sounds so much better than what is really ramblings only a little related to the topic and of even less import.

 

[atanu]

(2) Alternatively, we could imagine an even more 100% "separate" universe which is not even be detectable from within this universe. The two (or more) universes would have, we imagine, their own separate spacetime, matter, energy, etc. and there is zero matter/energy/information exchanged between the two. If this were the case, then by definition, no one living in universe A could know anything about universe B, including whether or not universe B exists. ......?

Well first of all I don't see how you can say that, since there could be another guy living in universe B with his own separate awareness, thus resulting in more than "One" total. .....

He He Spinkles. This is the oldest recorded topic in Nyaya Shastra (science of logic) of ancient India. :yes:

Compare the red and the blue and see how you are contradicting yourself. If there is zero matter/energy/information exchanged between the two, then the two are non-existent to each other. It is meaningless to talk of two. The Second is actually only an imagination in mind space of one.

Whatever we see through direct cognition or through report is held in one abode. That abode is called 'Awareness' in modern parlance. Theists call it 'nArAyana', which means abode -- abode of all. Thestically, If I consider my abode to be sacred, the full becomes sacred and sweet.

Nothing whatsover is outside it. In fact it cannot have any outside or inside.

I hope you will see it from above the ego.

 

[atanu]

Without getting your dander up too much, Atanu, is it not also possible that this fixation on Oneness is not just a natural result of our own form of consciousness?

Yes. You are correct in a wrong way. It appears that you have not meditated and pierced through the natue of "I" and found that the different "i"s are also homogeneous, boundariless consciousness. Different "I"s are different colored spectacles (different desires) worn over one homogeneous consciousness.

In sleep, in absence of the colored spectacle (desire) we become boundariless-contrastless homogeneous awareness. Those who know -- those who see the sleeping mind of deep sleep -- know that the being is solid bliss without any parting.

 

[godnotgod]

What is this 'behind'?

Don't know. This is what you said:

"It would seem to me though that any truth maya is veiling is maya. As form does not differ from emptiness, maya does not differ from atman. When we pull back the curtain, the man behind it is us."

I am neither Hindu nor Buddhist, but I do favour marriages.

You used the word 'atman', a Hindu term, above.

I have no more made the absolute relative than the relative absolute. That there is a difference between them is Maya; that there is no difference between them is Maya.

OK. But to know that one must be able to see it. Some do not. What do you call that state?

 

[godnotgod]

I think that both science and mysticism are born from a similar premise: the drive to keep going, to keep asking for deeper answers to the mysteries of reality without giving up. This hunger for infinite answers to infinite mysteries, is surely a common springboard from which both scientific endeavour and mystical knowing arise?

Just as scientists search out with painstaking analysis the mysteries of the universe, mystics search with unending journeying for the mysteries of the Infinite.

In both cases, could it be that the very thing being sought is what is causing the seeking?

Are not the universe and the Infinite one and the same, only seen differently?

"The universe is the Absolute as seen through the glass of Time, Space, and Causation."
Vivikenanda