If we accept science, must we reject mystical claims to knowledge? Naturalists answer “yes”—mystical knowledge-claims are rejected out of hand because they are not objectively checkable in a third-person manner. On the other extreme, New Age thinkers believe mystical and scientific claims are converging (for criticism, see Jones 2010, forthcoming). Some scientists do show interest in mystical claims. However, probably more scientists today would agree with Stephen Hawking who, in responding to his colleague Brian Josephson’s interest in Asian mysticism, said that the idea of mystical influence on science is “pure rubbish,” adding: “The universe of Eastern mysticism is an illusion. A physicist who attempts to link it with his own work has abandoned physics” (quoted in Boslough 1985: 127).
Obviously merely having a mystical experience does not conflict with science: one can have any experience regardless of what theories scientists may hold. Rather, it is the alleged cognitive significance of mystical experiences that brings mysticism into contact with science. (Whether science can explain mystical experiences was discussed in chapter 4.) Mysticism can come into contact with science in two ways: mystical claims about the nature of the world compared to current scientific theories, and mystical experiences as a particular way of knowing reality compared to science as a way of knowing reality.1 Mystical claims do not necessarily conflict with science. Extrovertive mystical experiences involve the beingness of nature and not scientific findings. Introvertive mystical experiences can be given a natural explanation (e.g., Angel 2002). Even if the introvertive experiences are given transcendent explanations, they can be compatible with scientific accounts of events in the world: such experiences can be seen as realizing a reality that was already present in the experiencer (God or another transcendent reality as the ground of the soul or of all of nature), and so no intervention by a separate transcendent reality occurs; experiencers do not change ontologically but only realize what has always been the case. In addition, as long as alleged transcendent realities are not seen as causes in the natural order, science will not have a say on whether they are real or not. Any transcendent reality would obviously conflict with the metaphysics of naturalism, but as long as the mystic’s mind is doing the experiencing (as opposed to a god intervening in nature to affect the mystics’ brain), mystical experiences are as natural as sense-experiences, and their transcendent explanations remain a matter of metaphysics.2 Naturalism too is a metaphysical position—one in which science is seen as entailing the rejection of transcendent realities. But, as noted in chapter 3, one can reject the metaphysics of naturalism and still accept science as providing the best knowledge of the day, and by doing so one can also accept transcendent claims that are consistent with scientific findings.
Mysticism and science each intend to provide knowledge of reality, but there are major differences in the two endeavors even if we accept that they both are cognitive. Mystics and scientists both have problems with language when encountering phenomena outside of the everyday realm of experience, but we cannot make any substantive convergence of mysticism and science out of these problems: merely because both scientists and mystics have problems expressing what they encounter does not mean they must be encountering the same thing. So too, both mystics and scientists must use metaphors when they encounter the unexpected outside the everyday realm or the realm of ordinary experience. But this only means that mystical and scientific thought is human thought encountering something new—it tells us nothing whatsoever about whether scientists and mystics are talking about the same aspects of reality.
Paradoxes also appear in both mysticism and science when the practitioners are confronted with contradictions between their expectations shaped by their everyday experiences and what they now experience. But paradoxes do not function in the same way: in mysticism, the aim is to abandon all conceptualizations altogether in order to experience beingness or its source free of the analytical mind, while in science the objective is to push through a paradox and to replace an inconsistent conceptualization with one that consistently reflects what has been observed. Paradox thus may provoke more research or new theories in science; in mysticism, it may evoke an experience but not necessarily a concern for new conceptual systems. This points to a fundamental difference between science and mysticism, even though both endeavors are experience-based: the centrality of formulations in science versus the need to transcend all formulations for mystical experiences to occur; the former reflects science’s concern with differentiated phenomena, and the latter reflects mysticism’s goal of getting beyond differentiations to experience beingness unmediated by any conceptual or emotional framework.
Thus, mysticism and science may share some problems in the abstract, but the problems in their actual contexts in each endeavor show divergences. In fact, one must fundamentally distort the nature of mysticism and science to see them as similar endeavors. Rather, mysticism and science deal with two different dimensions of reality: mysticism deals with the beingness of things in nature (the impermanence and interconnectedness of phenomena) in extrovertive experiences and the source of the being of the self or all of the natural world in introvertive experiences, whereas science deals with how nature works (the natural causal structures underlying events). There may be broad convergences between mysticism and science that any experientially based knowledge-giving enterprises would have, and the differences in epistemic nature may not be as great as is usually supposed (as noted below), but the two endeavors remain distinct: there are fundamental differences in subject-matter, purpose, method, and knowledge-claims, even when these seem superficially similar in their rhetoric.
One point about science is central here: fundamental scientific research is about how things work—i.e., scientists try to find the efficient and material causes in nature involved in events and make claims about such causes that ultimately depend on observations checkable by others.3 Science is a way of questioning nature that cannot be reduced to only the theories held at a particular moment. Scientists attempt to establish lawful patterns in the phenomenal world through observation or experimentation; they then use reasoning to try to identify the features in nature that may not be open to direct experience but are responsible for the lawful changes on the everyday level of the world.4 Under realist interpretations, scientists identify, however approximately, real parts of the world that explain the observed events; under antirealist interpretations, scientific claims are only about the observed events, and we have no claim to know what we cannot experience. The antirealist empiricists do not deny that there are real structures at work in the world; they only claim that we cannot obtain any knowledge of them if we cannot experience them; in short, the structures remain a mystery. Under empiricism, all theoretical realities are rejected. The “sparticles” of supersymmetry theory and the unexperiencable hidden dimensions of space-time of string theory are the paradigm of this problem today. To antirealists, scientific theories and models are at most merely shorthand devices for connecting observations. But under theoretical realism, science is not merely a matter of predicting new observations: it is a matter of understanding the structures in nature—an “invisible order” of postulated explanatory realities—and advancing theories as tentative explanations of their mechanisms.5
Extrovertive mystics, on the other hand, focus in altered states of mind on the beingness of the natural world and not on the features in nature structuring beingness, or indeed on the individual nature of anything within the world. Beingness may be called an “ontic cause,” but it is not the type of cause of interest to scientists: it is the cause of all things’ existence, not an efficient cause operating within the natural order that brings about changes. Beingness is not even an Aristotelian material cause, since the latter are different components within the natural order. That is, the beingness of things is a “vertical” depth-cause underlying all phenomena equally and is neutral to all matters of the “horizontal” interactions caused by nature’s structures. Such a uniform ontic cause does not explain why one state of affairs occurs and not another and thus does not make a scientific difference. Mystics, that is, focus on the clayness of the clay pot of the Upanishadic example, while scientists focus on the interactions causing different configurations of the clay pieces. Thus, mystical experiences do not provide any information on the causal questions of science but only bring into awareness an ontic depth: since that depth is constant, unchanging, and common to all things, it is neutral to all “horizontal” interactions. Mystical states are distinct from the analytical functions of the mind that scientists utilize in their observations and reasoning. In extrovertive mystical experiences, there is a Gestalt-like switch from focusing on the differentiated things within the natural realm to their common beingness. Even extrovertive experiences of diffuse beingness only point to the lack of distinct entities, not anything about structures. This means that mystical experiences cannot supply new information confirming or refuting any scientific claims about causal structures. The only new data mystical experiences can supply on any scientific issue are new mental states or functions for neuroscientists to study (as discussed in chapter 4).
Thus, mysticism and science are not matters of different interpretations of the same aspect of reality; they involve different aspects. Extrovertive mystics make claims about the impermanence and interconnectedness of the macro-objects we directly experience in the everyday world, not about features of the submicroscopic world that they have not experienced, even if these may be the causes of what is experienced. Introvertive mystics look at an entirely different dimension to reality: a transcendent reality that in the depth-mystical experience is traditionally interpreted as either the ground of the self, the source of the universe’s being, or God. Beingness is not a different level of structures that scientists simply cannot reach externally—it is an aspect of reality that is free of differentiations. Scientists focus precisely on the differentiations within nature that mystics bypass. Thus, it is hard to argue that mystics and scientists approach the same aspect of reality, or to see mystics as making claims about the underlying features of nature that scientists are revealing regarding the causes of things.
Scientists learn by observing and thinking about how things interact, while mystics still the analytical mind and reveal the unchanging beingness common to all things. Scientific experiences remain ordinary, everyday-type perceptions, even when scientists are measuring extraordinary parts of nature through technology-enhanced means; mystics’ experiences are extraordinary even when they are perceiving the ordinary. To determine how things work, scientists need to distinguish objects and see how they interact with each other; they do not focus on the common beingness of things or bits of matter in isolation, and for this, differentiations among phenomena are necessary. This includes fields and the smaller and smaller bits of matter being theorized—particle physicists are not interested in the beingness of fields or bits of matter, but only in what is measurable by the interaction of objects. Even the mass of an object is measured only by the interaction of objects.
Scientists cannot make claims about any undifferentiated aspect of reality. Since beingness is uniform for all particulars, it cannot be experimented on to see how it would interact with something else or be otherwise measured. There is no way to conduct tests on what is free of distinctions and common to everything; hence, no hypotheses about the nature of beingness can be scientifically tested in any way. Conversely, there can be no experimental support for any of the mystics’ assertions concerning being, since there can be no experiments or any other types of scientific observations or analyses that reveal the nature of anything uniform in nature. Thus, scientists cannot reveal anything about the nature of the beingness, and so scientific findings simply cannot contribute to the mystical understandings of reality. They cannot supply any evidence confirming or refuting any mystical claim about the thus-ness of things or a purported source. In short, nothing scientists can do can provide a reason for accepting or rejecting a mystical claim about being. Nor is there any empirical way to test mystics’ specific doctrinal metaphysical claims, such as Advaita’s claim that all is Brahman about the nature of any transcendent reality.
Thus, the uniformity of beingness and its lack of interacting parts preclude mystical claims being checkable by scientific methods or tested by any other empirical methods.6 Nor is new information about beingness revealed in new mystical experiences, since there are no new parts or causes to reveal about beingness. There is no way to devise new depth-mystical experiences to test something about beingness—all depth-mystical experiences are simply the same experiences empty of differentiable content repeated over and over again. This distinguishes mysticism from science as a way of knowing. But because beingness is free of differentiations and for that reason not open to scientific study, mystic are not making scientific claims about the world. Thus, the naturalists’ regular criticism of mysticism—that mystics have not discovered anything new about the world in a thousand years—does not apply: mystics are not trying to do what scientists do and failing; rather, they are looking at another aspect of reality that has no new experiential features to be discovered through research. It is not surprising then that they are not gaining new knowledge about the world that can be checked against empirical predictions when the knowledge gained in mystical experiences is about an aspect of reality that is not open to scientific measurement. Mystics simply do not engage beingness or transcendent realities the way scientists engage the world.7
So do scientists and mystics experience and discuss the same reality? Yes and no. Scientists and extrovertive mystics do experience the same phenomenal world, but they experience different aspects of it, and in that sense they do not experience the same realities. But scientists and mystics approach the world in distinctly different ways and with different subject-matters, and thus science and mysticism are different ways of knowing reality. Scientists are interested in the “what-ness” of objects (what categories we put things into) and the “how-ness” of what makes things tick (how things work or came to be), but not in the sheer “thus-ness” of things (being) that is the domain of mystics.
This distinction in subject-matter between reality’s beingness and the causes organizing it—a distinction going back to Aristotle—must be maintained in studying the relation of mysticism to science. Scientific and mystical insights are not of the same type because structure and beingness, while both real, are different and cannot be reduced to only one type of reality. Thus, scientists and mystics are not arriving at the same destination through different routes but are working on different subjects that remain analytically distinguishable. In short, mystical experiences do not give us any scientific knowledge of reality, and no science gives us any mystical knowledge. So too, mystical knowledge-claims, being uncheckable empirically, are different in character from science. Thus, the endeavors are both interested in knowing reality, but they approach different aspects of it and so do not infringe on each other in their central concerns. The two endeavors cannot be treated as if they are saying the same thing in “different languages” (contra, e.g., Mansfield 2008: 88, 141, 162). It is simply wrong to claim that scientists and mystics “are really expressing the same insight—one in the technical language of science, the other in the poetic, metaphorical language of spirituality” (Capra 2000: 8) when they are dealing with fundamentally different aspects of reality and doing different things.
As an analogy, consider this book. The letters, numbers, punctuation, and spaces are the smallest elements of the work, and the rules of grammar for forming the words and sentences are a component distinct from such elements. Scientists are like grammarians identifying the universe’s laws (its rules of grammar) and the fundamental building blocks (its words and elements). However, as grammarians, scientists are not interested in the nature of the substance embodying the parts—the “ink” that embodies the “letters.” What gives substance to the universe does not matter to scientists any more than the material that this book is produced in (ink and paper, electronic versions) matters to its informational content. That is, only the informational content of the text counts in science, and this is independent of the medium in which it is embodied. Physicists and chemists are not interested in the “narrative of the story”—the history of the universe—but only in the grammar, words, and elements utilized in the narrative. Geologists, biologists, astronomers, and cosmologists do deal with this historical dimension, but they are no more interested in the “beingness” of the medium in which the story is embodied than are physicists and chemists. In short, what scientists study in a “text” is not found by analyzing the ink and paper.
To bring mysticism into the analogy: extrovertive mystical experiences are a matter of experiencing the ink and paper apart from the formed letters, the rules of grammar, and the message of the text. That is, the experiences involve the beingness of the letters and the background paper, which is irrelevant to the information that the scientists study. (The analogy breaks down, since obviously science in the real world can also study the ink and paper or any other medium—any material remains differentiated within the world. This shows how difficult it is to make any analogies from our dualistic world about something as basic as the beingness common to everything.)
In sum, mystical experiences involve a different type of knowledge than does science: we cannot get information about the medium of embodiment from the information contained in the words of the text or vice versa. Thus, no empirical findings or theories in science could rule out the possibility that mystical experiences may be knowledge-giving of an aspect of reality that scientists qua scientists ignore. Conversely, mystical experiences of beingness are equally irrelevant to scientific theories of the components and structures of nature.
So what is “beingness”? It is “existence in general,” to use a not-too-helpful characterization. Even if there is something within the natural universe that gives particles their mass (e.g., a Higgs field), we still have to ask what gives that thing its being. Any further characterization of the “is-ness” of reality—being-as-such—is difficult. The question “what is reality?” has been a part of Western metaphysics since Parmenides, but it remains just as big a mystery today. The philosopher Milton Munitz asks whether we can even speak of beingness since it is not an object or set of objects (1965, 1986, 1990). Beingness, Munitz notes, “shines through” the known universe but is not identical with it, and hence we are aware of it—as with “the mystical” of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s mirror-theory-inspired Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (6.522), beingness manifests itself. But beingness never presents itself to us as a phenomenon (i.e., as an object set off from the observing subject), and so it is unutterable and incapable of being conveyed in language since it is not conceptualizable as an object. Thus, the proper response to our awareness of beingness is silence (Munitz 1986: 278). That is, the very beingness of the world cannot be “captured” by any language, and thus we are left with only mystery. Nor is beingness an entity of any type: it is not a thing or combination of things or the totality of things. Unlike an object, it is not “conceptually bound.” It has no properties, qualities, or structures to discover—it has nothing to describe. It is utterly unique in that it is not an instance of any category whatsoever. Thus, “beingness in itself” is unintelligible, since intelligibility requires the applicability of descriptive or explanatory concepts (ibid.: 274). That is, intelligibility relates to what something is or how it is, not to the underlying that-ness of reality. We live in a world of differentiated objects and see and speak only of those objects. Beingness itself remains beneath any conceptual map we could apply to the world to create order. Once we start speaking of beingness—or even just naming it—we make it one object among objects, which “it” is not. That is, we see trees and buildings, not beingness, and we cannot formulate propositions about it. (Note that Munitz’s points are based on philosophical analysis alone, not on mystical experiences, and presuppose the mirror theory of language.)
If Munitz’s position is correct, any explanations or understanding of the beingness of our world would be foreclosed. But the important point here is only that beingness cannot be studied scientifically since it is common to everything: because it is structureless, we cannot put it to any tests to see how it works. Treating the metaphysical beingness that keeps us from lapsing into nonexistence as a form of natural energy (as Adolph Grünbaum does [1996]) only leads to a problem: energy needs the metaphysical power of beingness as much as anything else. So too, classical mystical metaphysics may emphasize, as in Neoplatonism, the emanation of the phenomenal realm to explain the relation of “being” to the realm of “becoming,” or it may emphasize the ontic interconnection of things, but it never emphasized the efficient causal connections of things within the natural world.8 Any transcendent source of the universe is not shooting natural energy into the world from another realm. The metaphysical power of beingness may be constant or vary whether a law of conservation applies to natural matter/energy or not. Scientists’ findings will always be about features within the natural realm and cannot in principle affect the issue of the ontic status of this realm as a whole.9 (But this does not mean that one who is scientifically minded can deny beingness—the laws of nature must be embodied in something.)
Most people studying the relation of mysticism and science only see that both mystics and scientists are approaching reality and are out to gain knowledge based on experiences; thus, they assume that mystics and scientists are engaged in gaining the same type of knowledge through different techniques. This leads to the New Age claim that science and mysticism are the same basic endeavor. That there may be fundamentally different aspects of reality that would foreclose any substantive convergence of knowledge-claims is not usually considered. This includes even physicists making comparisons of physics to Asian thought (e.g., Mansfield 1976, 1989, 2008). But what was discussed above should be sufficient to conclude that mystics and scientists are not focusing on the same aspects of reality.
Also consider the types of experiences central to each endeavor: mystical experiences require the suspension of the very activity of the mind necessary for scientific measurements and theorizing—i.e., analytical functions of the mind. Extrovertive mystical experiences involve a lessening or discarding of conceptual differentiations. Introvertive mystical experiences suspend sense-experiences. The depth-mystical experience requires a complete stilling of the analytical mind: a “forgetting” of all images—all sense-experiences and mental differentiations are suspended. Indeed, mystics around the world see conceptual constructs—the very stuff of scientific theories—as positive impediments to achieving mystical experiences. Were mystics interested in the same aspect of reality as scientists, what scientists find through language-guided observation and theorizing would be seen as aids to mysticism, not obstacles. And how could mystics approach the same aspect of reality that scientists are interested in with a mind free of attention to differentiations? All measurements are concept-guided: preconceived questions and categories direct scientists’ attention to particular aspects of phenomena. Scientists look for something in particular: they select, label, categorize, and measure. When theorizing, they make predictions about what they will observe, they don’t attempt to “unknow” all that is conceptualized. Scientific observation, in short, is a reaction to concepts. Both extrovertive and introvertive mystical experiences involve an “unknowing” of all the knowledge that we normally accumulate in our everyday life through our senses and the analytical function of the mind, including all scientific knowledge. This means again that the tentatively held constructs of science established through conjecture and measurement would have to be discarded. Again, the different approaches of mysticism and science to reality are appropriate for different aspects of reality: emptying the mind of distinctions to experience what is common to everything versus focusing on distinctions among objects to measure how things interact to determine how they work.
If scientific knowledge is necessarily concept-driven while mystics try to experience reality in a way that transcends the conceptual, logically, how can the two types of knowing end up with the same type of knowledge? Granted, knowledge in both mysticism and science has a conceptual element, but scientific measurements always involve a mixture of the conceptual and the experiential, while at least depth-mystical experiences are direct experiences of reality unmediated by conceptualization. How can the knowledge resulting from conceptualized and unconceptualizable experiences be the same? Indeed, if scientific and mystical claims were about the same subject, then mystics are wrong when they say that what they experience cannot be conceptualized.
Mystical states of mind utilize different functions of the mind than do scientists in their measurements and reasoning. To Plotinus, the mystical intellect (nous), a mental faculty distinct from both sense-experience and reason (ratio), shares in and knows only beingness. Even if there is no separate faculty, a different brain configuration is involved. Meditation too is clearly experiential, but this does not make it the concept-driven observation of the empirical method of scientific knowing. Simply being experiential does not make yoga a “science of the mind.” The empirical method requires observations of a different kind—those particularized by conceptions for measurements and testing hypotheses. Mystics do make predictions about the results of their actions: if one attains selflessness, desires will end, and according to Indians this leads to an end of rebirth. But such claims are not being tested, nor are new things being discovered—only established knowledge is being recovered.10
The basic ontic claim for extrovertive mysticisms is that phenomenal reality is impermanent, interconnected, and constantly changing; some mystics also see it as grounded in a transcendent reality. Thus, the natural world has no discrete, permanent objects. Does this mean that there are no permanent structures in nature for scientists to find? No. Mystics deny only that there are permanent objects in nature, not that permanent structures may not be shaping them. As far as mysticism is concerned, there may be natural joints to nature to be described and explained in science. For example, as noted in chapter 5, the law of karma, involving our actions and their repercussions, is taken as lasting as long as the universe does.11 But the flux of the mental and physical parts of the universe is still impermanent. Thus, even if scientists determine that the laws of nature are permanent or in some sense transcend time and space, this does not change the impermanence of phenomena in the everyday world that is the subject of extrovertive mystical interest. That is, what mystics focus on is the impermanence of the experienced, everyday level of the world, not anything about the nature of the laws governing it. So too, it would be irrelevant if scientists find permanent bits of matter/energy below the everyday level. In fact, in an anti-empiricist move the early Abhidharma Buddhists posited extremely minute uncuttable and undestroyable particles of matter (paramanus) not open to sense-experience. Scientists, on the other hand, are not making any claim about the permanence of everyday things structured by the forces they discover. Mystics may think that scientists are missing the point of reality or are even deluded by focusing on differentiations, and scientists may think that mystics are misguided by fixating on the unchanging beingness of nature. But as long as scientists can see nature as in flux, science and extrovertive mysticism need not conflict in principle. That is, science is not counterevidence to mysticism as long as scientists can agree that the objects on the everyday level are not permanent—i.e., that interactions are between what are ultimately different temporary configurations. This neutralizes what many see as a conflict between extrovertive mysticism and science.
Mysticism’s central objective is not acquiring disinterested knowledge about how something works—it is transforming the person. This is not to say that scientists are uninterested in the consequences and practical applications of their research, but that in mystical traditions there is no fundamental interest in learning the how-ness of things only for the sake of learning how things work, as with basic scientific research. The focus in mysticism is working on the mind, but again mystics are not exploring the workings of the mind to discover new scientific facts even about how the mind works. Buddhism does not involve a systemic study of mental states to learn how the mind works—it is focused on overcoming our fundamental suffering. Today Neo-Buddhists, including the Dalai Lama, find the discoveries in physics, cosmology, and biology fascinating, and they accept that scientific theories may affect doctrines in their way of life, but they must admit that such discoveries in the final analysis are irrelevant to their central quest. And, if science touches core doctrines of a tradition (e.g., rebirth or consciousness), there are limits as to how much accommodation to science they may accept, as the Dalai Lama admits (see Jones 2011a: 108–10).
A scientific interest in efficient causal structures is not a way to any type of mystical enlightenment: focusing on identifying and explaining the structures of reality only increases attention to the differentiations in the world (and theorizing increases the amount of differentiations). It will never lead to the calming of the mind necessary for mystical experiences. The Buddha left questions about the age and size of the universe unanswered as irrelevant to the soteriological problem of suffering (Digha Nikaya 1.13, 3.137; Majjhima Nikaya 1.427; Anguttara Nikaya 2.80), and no doubt he would leave all scientific questions about even the workings of the brain unanswered for the same reason.
Since mysticism and science deal with different dimensions of reality, neither can offer direct aid to the other; as noted earlier, neither can offer verification or any empirical support or disconfirmation for theories or beliefs in the other field. Nor could what mystics experience about reality be used as a “god of the gaps” to fill in holes in scientific theories, since the uniformity of beingness experienced in any type of mystical experience is not an explanation for why one state of affairs is the case and not another. Theories in the two fields will always be about different aspects of reality.
As discussed in chapter 4, some people advocate expanding neuroscience to incorporate the direct, first-hand approach to knowledge of meditation. Such an expansion would cause major changes in neuroscience. But even if these changes in neuroscience do not occur, mysticism can offer some indirect aid to science. Scientists need to come up with new ideas when exploring and trying to understand and explain the workings of the natural world, and doctrines in mystical traditions are one possible source of new ideas.12 Theories in mystical traditions on consciousness and perception may provide ideas that scientists can work into scientific hypotheses. Mystical traditions such as Buddhism that emphasize mindfulness may be more fertile grounds for ideas for possible scientific hypotheses than traditions such as Advaita that emphasize the depth-mystical experience; the former’s systems of metaphysics emphasize analyzing the phenomenal world, while the latter can ignore such “details” in discussing the ontic status of the entire natural realm. Mystical ideas may be too general to give rise to any specifics for a scientific theory, although stories and images in mysticism may touch off a scientist’s imagination. But this does not make mysticism part of science: ideas for hypotheses can come from any cultural sources—the chemist Friedrich August Kekelé got the idea for the benzene ring from a hallucination he had while gazing into a fire after a long day of work, of two whirling snakes each grabbing the other’s tail and thus forming a circle. Scientists still must rework any ideas they derive from any source into actual scientific hypotheses and then must determine on scientific grounds alone if any of these new hypotheses are valuable: the ideas themselves do not entail any scientific hypotheses and are not themselves scientific evidence, any more than Kekelé’s dream is. However, religious ideas have a tendency of going from being helpful candidates for scientific hypotheses to being “control beliefs” that their advocates assert for nonscientific reasons and that would restrain the development of science (see Jones 2011a, 2012a). Neo-Buddhists may also veer off in that direction (see Jones 2011a: 107–10).
So too meditation may help scientists clear their minds and focus their attention. However, scientific research cannot be conducted during meditation: introvertive concentrative meditation ignores the outer world, and mindfulness meditation interferes with the type of attention to distinctions guided by conceptions that is needed to execute experiments, make scientific measurements, and develop new theories. In “forgetting oneself,” mindfulness does involve the objectivity of disinterest, and this is how scientists are supposed to approach their research and their findings. But meditation may also quell emotions or the attachment to a particular scientific theory, and emotions and attachment to a particular theory may drive scientific research. So too, mindfulness quells the wandering mind that has been connected to creativity. The selflessness of a mindful state also goes beyond the mere lack of self-interest: it lacks the attention to distinctions that scientists need and thus interferes with science. Enlightened mystics do still see differentiations among phenomena (even though they do not see these in terms of permanent, distinct entities), but to conduct scientific observations and theorizing they would have to change the focus of their attention back to the differentiations from beingness.
Science may also offer indirect aid to mysticism. The lack of new theories in classical mystical belief-systems since the Middle Ages points to the fact that beingness and the source of beingness are not open to fresh mystical experiences or new analyses. In particular, depth-mystical experiences simply remain the same. Since there is no new experiential input, in the future any new mystical conceptualizations of what is allegedly experienced in the different types of mystical experiences will reflect input from other cultural sources. And here science may help indirectly: scientific theories may be one such source of new ideas for new analogies for understanding what was experienced. Indeed, there were new mystical doctrines or systems put forth in the twentieth century based on science: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Shri Aurobindo each combined mysticism with biological evolution, even though it is the evolution of consciousness that they were concerned with (see King 1980). But this does not make the science that is utilized mystical, any more than any ideas modified into mystical theories from other sources thereby make those sources mystical.
Second, scientific theories may aid the understanding of the metaphysical theories that mystics put forth. For example, the Dalai Lama finds Einstein’s theory of relativity as giving “an empirically tested texture” to Nagarjuna’s theory of time (Gyatso 2005: 205–6). But again, such indirect aid does not make science a mystical endeavor—it only offers one possible nonmystical source of assistance for comprehending mystics’ metaphysics. Moreover, there is also the very real danger that this practice can actually inhibit our understanding of mysticism if we continue to think about scientific structures and not beingness or if we force mystical ideas to conform to our scientific understanding. That is, seeing mystical metaphysics through the prism of science may distort one’s understanding of mystical ideas and practices (and vice versa) (see Jones 2010: chap. 7).
Third, for those who want to modernize a premodern mystical tradition, science can weed out factual claims from the tradition’s worldview that are now known to be inaccurate. Arguably, this is a requirement of rationality. As long as such claims are irrelevant to the mystical objectives of the tradition, this is no problem. But there is a danger that advocates of, for example, a “scientific Buddhism” may change the nature of Buddhism to make it seem “scientific.”
Fourth, science may help mystics find more efficient meditative techniques. But science cannot be a “spiritual path.” For example, for a scientist who thinks of nature as God’s creation, research can be “for the glory of God,” but this does not make science mystical any more than spinning cotton became mystical after Gandhi utilized it as a practical type of mindfulness training.
Science and extrovertive mysticism share an attention to the natural realm, albeit different aspects of it. But it is important to realize that even the depth-mystical Advaitins do not consider the realm of “illusion” (maya) to be unreal in the way of a delusion involving something that is not there is (asat)—to use the Indian analogy, imagining a rabbit’s horns. Rather, the illusion involves misreading what is really there: we are misled by appearances to focus on the temporary configurations of things, and thus we end up being confused about what is real—we mistakenly think of the phenomenal world as existing separate from brahman/atman and as consisting of ontologically distinct parts. In the Upanishadic analogy of the clay pot, the preexisting clay is real and the pot (i.e., the temporary form the clay is in) is not. This conveys the sense of what is real and what is “illusory” in both introvertive and extrovertive mysticism generally: the temporary, dependent, and impermanent configurations are dismissed as ultimately unreal and only “illusions,” but the reality of the underlying beingness is affirmed. No classical mystical tradition dismisses the world as “unreal” in any stronger sense: the beingness manifested in the everyday world remains real.
Moreover, mystics need not deny that the world has stable structures that are open to scientific study. Even in Advaita, the realm of illusion is stable and lawful (e.g., the law of karma governing unenlightened actions), and it remains so even for the enlightened. Shankara granted sense-experience and reasoning complete freedom within their proper sphere: the “dream” realm of the natural world (Brihadaranyaka-upanishad-bhashya 2.1.20; Bhagavad-gita-bhashya 18.66). And there is no reason that any other mystics should not do the same, unless metaphysical and theological considerations dictate otherwise. Mystics need not repudiate anything scientists say about the nature of structures (with the possible exception of theories of the nature of consciousness). Enlightened mystics experience the world by focusing on its beingness rather than the what-ness and how-ness of things, but this does not mean that structures do not exist, any more than focusing on the color of things means that things do not have mass. What is experienced seems timeless during the experience, but how long the experience occurred can nevertheless still be measured, and the same applies more generally to the other features of nature absent in either introvertive or extrovertive mystical experiences.13 In sum, nothing of reality’s underlying structures is necessarily negated by these experiences alone.
Unless metaphysical judgments such as Advaita’s prevail, mystics can treat being and structures as two separate but equally real aspects of the world. The distinctions that scientists draw in the differentiated realm of reality need not be deemed groundless, although they are not a matter of being. This affirmation of the reality of the structures that scientists study is not to deny that classical mystics oppose the discursive type of knowledge of which science is the paradigm. Classical Daoism is a good example of the rejection of such knowledge: the Daoists’ interest in nature remained mystical and did not lead to a scientific interest in how things in nature work (see Jones 1993: 127–46). We cannot simply equate any interest in nature with a scientific interest in understanding the order behind things that explains actions. Daoists go beyond conceptualizations in such a way that they are able to flow more effortlessly with patterns inherent in nature, but this does not mean that they have any scientific interests in finding and explaining the efficient causes of those patterns. In the Daoist “forgetting” state of mind (xu), our mind is no longer guided by our own mentally conceived divisions. Rather, mystics respond spontaneously to what is presented without the analytical mind. Even if mystics have internalized a purpose for their actions, they are free of seeing the dualities and categories that the analytical mind creates as projected onto reality. But again, anything free of conceptions cannot guide scientific measurements or theorizing: scientific theorizing is a matter of changing conceptions; conceptualizations in scientific observations and experiments lead to predictions, control, and manipulation rather than a simple mindfulness of whatever occurs.
In general, science cultivates the analytical mind and increases attention to the differentiated and thus diverts attention from what mystics consider essential for aligning our lives with reality. To Advaita, science is concerned with only the content of a “dream.” Buddhism in general shows, in Winston King’s phrase, a “disenchantment with the world,” including any scientific interest in it. For mystical experiences to occur, we need to empty the mind of what is central to science. The focus in mysticism is working on the mind, but the aim is to achieve a knowledge inaccessible to the analytical mind driving science. As a Sufi saying puts it, the mind is “the slayer of the Real” because the analytical mind separates us from an awareness of God. Thus, science and mysticism pull in opposite directions, and most serious practitioners of either endeavor may very well dismiss the other as a waste of valuable time and energy.
Both scientists and mystics make a distinction between appearance and reality. However, they draw the distinction differently. For scientists, the reality producing appearances is the underlying structures responsible for what we experience in the everyday world, not beingness. (Nothing in science per se requires finding the phenomena of the everyday world to be unreal, only a type of reductive metaphysics does that. Scientific analysis is not inherently reductionist: scientists can provide analyses of the makeup and causes of phenomena without making the additional metaphysical claim that the phenomena are not real. [See Jones 2013: chap. 3.]) Mystics, on the other hand, are concerned with the real beingness underlying the “illusory” conceptual creations we fabricate. In particle physics, atoms and their components are impermanent eddies in a sea of energy; for mystics, there are also impermanent eddies, but they are the macro level, everyday entities arising from the connections of phenomena to what surrounds them. The mystics’ claim remains about the beingness of the phenomena of the everyday level: mystics did not have to wait for the physicists’ findings of a lack of distinct entities on lower levels for confirmation—their claim about everyday things would not be disconfirmed if physicists found permanent realities on lower levels, or be confirmed if they found interconnectedness. Thus, scientists and mystics are interested in the “fundamental nature of reality,” but in different aspects of the reality behind appearances. Scientists and mystics do converge on the abstract claim “There is reality behind appearances,” but focusing on the abstract claim misses the substantively different aspects of reality that are involved and the different approaches to the world. Thus, the senses in which they deal with “appearances” remain distinct. The same terms may be employed in mysticism and in discussions of science, but this does not mean that mystics and scientists are discussing the same thing.
Similarly, the unity of being in depth-mysticism must be distinguished from the unity of structures in a scientific “search for unity.” Any scientific unity unifies apparently different structures, while in mysticism the oneness of being has no parts to unify. These two concepts cannot be conflated: mysticism is neutral on the question of whether scientists can reduce the levels of structure to only one level, since the mystics’ concern is the oneness of being, not the possible oneness or plurality of such structures as electromagnetism and gravity. Mystics do not aim at a more comprehensive unification than scientists or pursue a Grand Unified Theory (contra Weber 1986: 10) but deal with the oneness of a different aspect of reality. The physicist David Bohm says, “The mystic sees in matter an immanent principle of unity,” but he is referring to structures, not beingness, and he admits that “some mystics” go beyond matter to the transcendent (ibid.: 144). In some mystical metaphysics, there is one source of all reality (hence, of both being and structures), and thus a deeper unity than in science, but this is still only a matter of the number of structures at work in the natural world. In short, any “Theory of Everything” in physics would be irrelevant to the mystics’ concern. Physicists are simply not doing what mystics are doing. Perhaps if scholars used “identity of being” when discussing such mystical systems as Advaita and not “unity” (which suggests a unification of diverse parts), fewer people would be misled concerning “oneness.”
Consciousness figures prominently in both mindfulness and depth-mysticism, but what mystics say about the nature of consciousness has nothing in common with its alleged role in one interpretation of particle physics. Nothing mystics say suggests that consciousness is one causal force among other forces operating within the universe on the quantum level or any other level. For mindfulness mystics, we create illusory “entities” in the everyday world by erroneously separating off parts of the flux of reality with our analytical minds; it is a matter of our everyday perceptions and beliefs and has nothing to do with the idea that consciousness is a possible causal factor in physical events. Depth-mysticism also has no parallel. For Advaitins, consciousness is an inactive search light, not an agent acting within the world in any sense. Consciousness is not one element in the universe but is the only reality: it is not a causal energy in the material realm that could interact with other things in the “dream” realm—consciousness cannot interact with what is “unreal” (matter), nor does it have structure or parts that could interact with each other. Even claiming “all is consciousness” may be misleading: it would naturalize Brahman into a field of conscious energy in the “dream” world in which we all participate, and this goes against the Advaita tenet that Brahman cannot be any type of object among objects or anything experiencable as an objectified reality. It is not that mystics go further than physicists on observation—what depth-mystics are claiming is fundamentally different from any alleged interaction of the observer and observed in particle physics or on another level. Perhaps if scientists referred more to “quantum measurement” rather than “quantum observation,” fewer New Age advocates would see consciousness as playing a role in quantum physics.
Nothing in mysticism suggests that mystics experience what physicists postulate. Mysticism remains exclusively a matter of directly experiencing the beingness of phenomena: the that-ness of everyday phenomena in extrovertive mysticism and the source of the beingness of the self or all everyday phenomena in introvertive mysticism. Mystical experiences may affect our brain wiring and thus how we experience the environment that we have evolved in, but absolutely nothing in the writings of the classical masters remotely suggests that such experiences realize quantum-level events or that through meditation mystics realize that energy comes in discrete packets (“quanta”)—contra the undivided unity of depth-mysticism or the borderlessness of phenomena in extrovertive mysticism, or any other scientific item.14 At best, one could claim that depth-mystics experience a Russellian “neutral monism” that is the source of both matter and mind; they do not access particles on the quantum level or anything else about the quantum level of organization. (And Advaitins would object that this would make Brahman’s “dream” an objective reality.) Nor did any Buddhist connect space with time in their analyses. Indeed, nothing in the Buddhist teachings would predict that time is connected to space. Theravada Buddhists in fact exempt space (akasha), but not time, from being “constructed” (samskrita) (Anguttara Nikaya 1.286)—i.e., it is unaffected by anything else. This makes space as independent and absolute as is possible within their metaphysics and precludes any encompassing holism. In classical Indian culture, space is a substance pervading the world, but it is not the source of anything else—it is not any type of “field” connecting everything with everything else, or out of which entities appear; rather, it is a separate element. Nor do introvertive mystics connect space with time. It is possible to see Brahman as an experiencable noumenon, although it would be a featureless and structureless noumenon, but nothing suggests that introvertive mystics experience the differentiated and extended “four-dimensional space-time continuum” of relativity theory or the “ground manifold state” out of which quantum phenomena emerge and are reabsorbed—the “space-time manifold” is no more “pure beingness” than is an object in the everyday world, since according to physicists it too is differentiated and structured.
It is not only that different states of consciousness are involved. Mystics do not directly experience the same “truth” that scientists arrive at tentatively or approximately through the route of theory and measurement. Mystics do not reach a fundamental structure of reality while scientists fail to do so. Each endeavor, if each is in fact cognitive, reaches something fundamentally real but different: mystics experience unmediated beingness or its source; scientists will discover the one fundamental physical level of structure, or, under antireductionism, physicists and nonphysicists discover multiple equally fundamental levels of structuring. Each pursues the depth of a dimension of reality but not the same dimension. Neither is reducible to the other. And whether there is a common source to both structure and being or whether one in fact is more fundamental than the other in some respect cannot be answered by scientific analysis or mystical experiences.
The contents of science and mysticism will always remain distinct since they diverge in the substance of their claims, and thus their theories and ideas can never converge into one new set of theories replacing theories in either science or mysticism. Thus, neither endeavor can replace or incorporate the other. Nor do extrovertive mystical claims about the impermanence and interconnectedness of the experienced everyday realm in any way validate or verify or falsify scientific theories about underlying structures. Conversely, scientific analysis is fundamentally nonmystical in nature, with its focus on how the differentiated parts of nature affect each other. For this reason, there can be no integration of science and mysticism into one new, more comprehensive science—a new “integrated science of nature” (contra Weber 1986: 1–19). No “collaborative effort” (contra Zajonc 2004: 7) is possible because of their disparate subjects, let alone a “synthesis,” “fusion,” or “conceptual unification” of the two endeavors.
Since science and mysticism involve different ways of knowing and different aspects of reality, there should in principle be no conflicts between them.15 But the situation is complicated by the fact that mysticism involves more than just cultivating mystical experiences: mystical ways of life attempt to understand the significance of these experiences by laying out the general nature of a person, the world, and transcendent realities in order that mystics may align their lives with reality “as it really is.” The factual claims within such metaphysics about the person and the world may interact with scientific theories. This is not an interaction of mystical experiences or insights with modern science but a matter of the encompassing metaphysical beliefs of particular mystical traditions. Thus, mysticism and science as ways of knowing may be totally independent, but the claims from total mystical ways of life and science about the world are not.16
In general, mystics may show interest in the structures of experiences, but they show little interest in the physical structures of the experienced world. For example, Buddhist theorists discuss mental phenomena extensively, but only in the context of how to end suffering, not out of a disinterested desire to know the nature of the mind in general. In the detailed Abhidharmist dharma analysis noted in chapter 5, the focus is on a phenomenology of consciousness to help clear the mind of obstacles in order to achieve the desireless state, not on a scientific analysis of the world. That there is little interest in the material world is revealed by the fact that in the Sarvastivada tradition, the closest concept to “matter”—“form” (rupa)—is only one of seventy-five factors of experience (dharmas). And even then, “form” relates only to our experience of things and not to matter in itself or energy; it is about the forms that we directly experience, not any possible substance behind them. By naming things, we give what is actually real a form—hence, the common phrase for the physical world: “name and form (nama-rupa).” Classical mystics in general simply do not express any intellectual curiosity about understanding matter or identifying the structures at work in the world or devising explanations of such structures, which makes perfect sense in light the mystics’ interest in an aspect of reality not amenable to scientific analysis.
Most often, mystical traditions also adopt ideas from the encompassing religious traditions and the culture of their society and era. For example, Hindu and Buddhist mystics adopted the traditional Hindu cosmology, the “physics” of earth, water, fire, and air, and also the idea of karma and rebirth. Daoists similarly adopted the standard Chinese cosmology, with the Way ordering the constant flux of things. With the presence of such metaphysics in mystical ways of life about the general nature of the natural world, ideas from different mystical systems do enter the same arena as science, and this creates the possibility that a particular scientific theory and the doctrines of a particular mystical tradition will agree or conflict. Different mystical traditions advance beliefs about the structures related to the mind and human beings (in particular, on the nature of consciousness and on something in us that survives death), and these may agree or conflict with specific scientific theories in neuroscience. The historical sciences—cosmology, geology, evolution—may present specific problems for the creation myths of different religions, and mystical belief-systems will share any of these problems when these myths are adopted from their encompassing religions.
However, attempts to create one general worldview for “mysticism and science” that encompasses both scientific findings and a “mystical view of things” usually end up twisting both science and mysticism. Advocates of a thorough holism want particular theories—in particular, a role for consciousness in physical events—and thus they stand apart from the current mainstream in physics and neuroscience. So too, they would have to edit mystical systems. All mystical traditions in their hands become one unified generic “mystical system.” The diversity of mystical beliefs throughout history is ignored—either one tradition is deemed the “essence” or “epitome” of all mysticism, or a “perennial philosophy” becomes a control belief for how mystical traditions are construed. For all depth-mystical traditions, all phenomena become manifestations or emanations of an underlying conscious source. This fits the Upanishads’ emanationism but not Advaita’s “identity” metaphysics or Samkhya’s dualism of matter and multiples selves. Extrovertive mystical experiences of beingness also do not by themselves justify the idea that all things in the universe mutually influence all other things or bring about each other’s existence or are mutually interconnected the way the jewels of Indra’s net are. In sum, such a vision certainly does not express the “true essence” of all mystical traditions of the world.
Many who see a similarity between mysticism and science in content but a difference in method or vice versa speak of a “complementarity.” For many, mysticism is a function of the right hemisphere of the brain and science the left, so only by utilizing what comes through each separate hemisphere do we have a “full-brain approach” (rather than the hemispheres working in tandem). However, difficulties arise here. Mysticism and science do not separate neatly into different compartments. It is not as if mysticism is about the “inner world” of consciousness and science is about the “outer world” of material objects: mystics work on consciousness, but they are interested in the beingness of all of reality, including the beingness of the “outer world,” and science is interested in the brain/mind. José Cabezón elaborates the complementarity position: science deals with the exterior world, matter, and the hardware of the brain, while Buddhism deals with the interior world and the mind; science is rationalist, quantitative, and conventional, while Buddhism is experiential, qualitative, and contemplative (2003: 50). But he realizes there are limitations: Buddhism is concerned with the external world, and science can study aspects of the mind (ibid.: 58). It is also hard to see natural science as “rationalist” rather than “experiential,” although there is the contrast between the necessary conceptual element in scientific observations and theorizing versus its lessening or total absence in mystical experiences. There are also limitations on any compartmentalization of all elements of mystical ways of life from science due to mystical ways of life embracing more than mystical experiences, as just discussed.
The idea of complementarity at least affirms that mysticism and science involve irreducible differences.17 Each supplies a type of knowledge the other is missing. Each endeavor has theories that give an account of reality that is complete in the sense that it covers one aspect of all of reality, but the accounts are of different dimensions of reality. Since they involve different dimensions in their core claims, they are logically independent in their core claims; thus, changes in the claims from one do not necessitate any changes in the beliefs of the other. Neither mystics nor scientists need to dismiss the other endeavor. If, however, mystics do reject science or scientists do reject mysticism, practitioners of either endeavor would not see their own endeavor as missing something important that the other supplies. Nothing in either endeavor calls for the other type of knowledge. Most importantly, classical mystics reject knowledge of the “differentiations” as truly reflecting anything ultimate about the nature of reality; thus, attempts at a reconciliation of science and mysticism that values science as cognitive will be at odds with classical mystical ways of life.
The most popular way to reconcile mysticism and science as complements is to claim that mystics are dealing with the “depth” of reality and scientists with the “surface” of the same aspect of reality. That is, mystics and scientists are utilizing different approaches to reality, but they apprehend the same aspect rather than fundamentally different aspects of the reality of structures versus beingness: mystics simply turn observation inward and arrive at a deeper level of the same truth that scientists reach observing external phenomena (e.g., Capra 2000). Since science and mysticism both lead to the same basic knowledge, people only have to choose the route that is more suitable to our own disposition and become either a scientist or mystic—either way, they end up in the same place.
However, advocates of this position do not see its consequence: either mystics are producing more thorough knowledge of what scientists are studying—i.e., they get to the root of the same subject that scientists study and thus are doing a more thorough job than are scientists—or scientists are examining the same subject as mystics but with more precision. Either way, one endeavor is superseded: either mysticism’s thoroughness renders science unnecessary or science’s precision replaces mysticism’s looser approach. Thus, this position becomes the basis for rejecting either mysticism or science altogether in the end. So too, since science and mysticism are achieving the same knowledge through different routes, there is in fact no reason to bother with the strenuous way of life that serious mysticism requires: all we have to do is read a few popular accounts of contemporary physics, cosmology, and biology on complexity or “the unity of things” and we will know what enlightened mystics know and hence be enlightened. All that matters is learning a post-Newtonian way of looking at the world, not experiencing the beingness of reality free of all points of view. Conversely, by the same reasoning, scientists need not go through the expense and trouble of conducting elaborate experiments to learn about structures—mystics have already achieved the same knowledge with even more thoroughness through their experiences. Mystics already know what scientists will find on the quantum level of organization in the future, so there is no need to conduct any more experiments—physicists should shut down the CERN supercollider and just meditate.
In sum, if scientists and mystics are studying the same thing and one is doing a better job, both endeavors are not needed. On the other hand, if scientists and mystics are studying different aspects of reality that result in completely different types of knowledge-claims, and if both do in fact produce knowledge, then both endeavors in the end would be needed for our fullest knowledge of reality. Together they form a more complete picture of reality by supplying noncompeting knowledge of different aspects of reality. It is not as if all we have to do is push further in science and we will end up mystically enlightened, or push further in mysticism and we will end up with a “Theory of Everything” for physics and all other sciences. Scientists, including particle physicists and cosmologists, are not even investigating areas that “border on the mystical,” but focus on another aspect of reality altogether. Science and mysticism of course can be said to have a “common pursuit of truth” and to be “united in the one endeavor of discovering knowledge about reality,” or both “seek the reality behind appearances.” But this only places both endeavors into a common, more-abstract category of being knowledge-seeking activities—it does not mean that they are pursing the same truths. Both mystics and scientists encounter aspects of reality that we are not normally aware of, but this is not grounds for positing any more substantive commonality—the difference in subject-matter forecloses any greater convergence. Mystics and scientists are engaging different aspects of reality differently, and for different purposes. In short, scientists and mystics are doing fundamentally divergent things.
So too, mysticism and science may share a general ideal methodology—i.e., careful observation, rational analysis, open-mindedness, and having background beliefs (e.g., Wallace 2003: 1–29).18 But in actual practice, the divergence in objectives and subject-matter between cultivating mystical experiences versus scientific measurement and explanation cause very different implementation of any common abstract general principles. In the end, the only commonality may be features that any enterprise would have whose purpose is to discover knowledge of reality and that encounters things we would not expect from our ordinary experience in the everyday world—knowledge based on experience, use of metaphors, and so on. The two endeavors value types of experiences and conceptualizations very differently, and this alone precludes any deeper convergence in “method.”
If one accepts that science gives knowledge of the structures of reality and mysticism gives a knowledge of beingness, then reconciling science and mystical spirituality is a worthy goal: each gives knowledge of a different but equally real dimension of reality. But a way should be sought that does not distort them, and thus does not join them in the usual “complementary” manner (see Jones 2010: chap. 16 for one possible reconciliation). A role both for our discursive mind and for stilling that mind would be needed: reason is needed in science (and as discussed in the last chapter, in mysticism), and the discursive mind involves objectifications in understanding the structures of reality, but the human mind may also be capable of experiencing reality free of the activity of the discursive mind in mystical experiences.
At a minimum, scientific and mystical claims will always be “harmonious,” “compatible,” and “consistent” on core claims since they are dealing with different aspects of reality and hence they cannot intersect at all in their basic claims. In Upanishadic terms, mysticism is a matter of higher knowledge (para-vidya) and science would be consigned to lower knowledge (apara-vidya) (Mundaka Up. 1.1.4–6). Basic claims in one endeavor are simply irrelevant to basic claims in the other—logically, they cannot converge or conflict even in principle. This makes reconciling mystical claims and science very simple as long as mystics refrain from making claims about how the phenomenal world works—e.g., they confine introvertive claims to a transcendent self or ground of reality that is not an agent causing particular events in the world. The metaphysics of naturalism would be ruled out, but nothing from science itself could in principle present a problem. However, as noted, mystical traditions have metaphysics in their total ways of life that always reflect more concerns than cultivating mystical experiences alone. Thus, problems may arise when a religious tradition’s metaphysics specifies something that conflicts with science—in particular, with consciousness and with a theistic god who acts in nature. But such metaphysics do not relate specifically to the mystical experience of beingness that is central to mysticism.
Thus, because of their differences in concerns, mysticism and science remain distinct endeavors and basically irrelevant to each other. At best, there is some overlap on their edges—e.g., science may help reform mystics’ metaphysical beliefs or show more efficient ways to meditate, and mystical ideas may suggest new theories to devise and test in science. All that the theories in different extrovertive mysticisms and the sciences have in common is a general metaphysics of impermanence and interconnectedness of the components of reality, not the specifics of any theories in science or mysticism. Thus, their “common ground” is strictly on a metaphysical level. Neither endeavor can verify or falsify the other’s claims. Similarly with introvertive mysticism: introvertive mystics’ claims involve experiencing something that is neutral to scientific claims.
Nevertheless, this does mean that science does not, as is often claimed in philosophy, eviscerate mysticism. One can accept theories in each endeavor—indeed, one can practice both—without any cognitive dissonance. But this is only because mysticism and science remain distinct ways of knowing reality.