Saturday, June 16, 2018

Spirituality And Reality


There are many people who see spiritual beliefs as a function of failure to deal with reality. This is wrong – this is completely wrong.

The reason is that there is a lot more to reality than what these people acknowledge. I for one have had many experiences with less than a billionth chance of happening whose only possible explanations are spiritual and religious. The number of these experiences is such that I would have to be a complete psycho to deny them. I do not have the luxury of such beliefs.

Some things can be measured. Others cannot be measured, at least using present technology. They are felt. They are intuited. They are real even though they are not measurable with our present machines.

Sometimes they actually can be measured. I used to see master numbers on the clock – numbers such as 2:22 and 3:33 – so one day I decided to set up an experiment. I set four different clocks to four different times around the house and recorded every time that I looked at the clock. One in ten of the numbers I got were master numbers, when by chance it would be one in sixty.

One day I saw in a meditation an outpouring of sorrow in Argentina. Shortly after that I picked up a paper and found out that there was an outpouring of sorrow in Argentina because someone famous had died.

My girlfriend woke up in the middle of the night, complaining that her ex-husband was speaking to her in spirit. In the morning she decided to test it, so she said in her head, “OK Todd, if you have been speaking to me in spirit call me.” Less than a minute later Todd called her and told her that he had been talking to her in spirit.

In 1995, I had a beautiful relationship with a woman named Michelle, who had finished Harvard in three years and who was a poet. In 2000 I wanted to have it recapitulated, so what happens but that I start corresponding with a woman named Michele, who had finished Caltech in three years, who was a poet, and who in 1995 had had a similarly beautiful relationship with a man from Bulgaria whose last name was similar to my middle name.

In all of these cases we see results that are vastly outside of chance, and whose only explanations are spiritual and religious.

When I started talking about these experiences, most of what I got was crap. Supposedly I was stupid; supposedly I was illogical; supposedly I was a kook. I am none of these things. I am somebody who has had many spiritual experiences, and who, unlike any number of those involved in skepticism, is too honest to deny them.

Logic is a method, not a worldview. When something happens that contradicts the worldview, the logical thing to do is to correct the worldview and not to deny the experience. The other path is not logical; it is dishonest.

Just how dishonest? I once knew a young mathematics teacher who said that he ignored all claims of the supernatural. This is not logic, it is dishonesty. In fact there are many genuine scientists who speak openly about their spiritual experiences, and I am acquainted with a distinguished anthropology professor who speaks of such things quite a lot. He can do logic at least as well as any skeptic. He also knows that there is more to reality than what these people believe.

Another false belief about spiritual experiences is that they are all positive. That is wrong as well. Spiritual experiences can be scary. At the very least they are going to be disruptive to a worldview that denies them. That is not the fault of spiritual experience. That is the fault of the worldview.

Do we throw away science? Not at all. However we have the obligation to make sense of such things, whether or not they are what we want or what accords with what we know of the world. As Augustine said, “Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.” The main implication of such things is that we cannot be simply evolving matter. It strongly points to an intelligent creator; and that means everything for how we live our lives.

A Christian scientist was talking in the church about the “survival-of-the-fittest” theory. He said that the fittest being in the world was Jesus, and Jesus sacrificed Himself for the rest of us. He did not order us to live by Darwinian dynamics. He ordered us to live how God wants us to live.

How could Christianity have outlasted the Roman Empire if it was stupid? How could it have become formative to the greatest civilization in the history of the world? Paul was nowhere close to being stupid. He was brilliant. And people have much to learn from what he said and did.

One thing is for sure. Spirituality is not for fools, lunatics or conmen. It has adherents with vastly greater intellect than its critics, most of whom are also better human beings. Any attempt to pathologize such a thing is supreme arrogance of thinking that your worldview is better than reality. Once again, there is vastly more to reality than these people believe there to be. And the logical thing to do, when faced with this, is to correct the worldview.

I have shared some of my experiences. I have a testimony of many others, including people of exceptional intelligence and character. And they have a much greater understanding of reality than the engineering types who think that they are the only sane and rational people in the world.

To simply condemn something that the bulk of humanity believes in is a far greater hubris than anything that such people ascribe to the spiritually minded. And it is a highly destructive form of hubris that beats people down and prevents valuable things from being done. So it is time that more people call these bullies on their behavior. Do not discard science; discard materialistic bigotry. And allow people the benefits of both mind and spirit, resulting in them leading much better lives.

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