The purpose of my statement was to say that a skillful means towards one’s enlightenment does not necessarily have to be “scientific” in it’s approach. There is certainly a scientific dimension to the inner sciences, and my approach is itself scientific, but you will find that the more you try to create a fixed structure of any kind out of “spirituality” - is the more and more limitations you impose upon it. What is seen as “scientific” is relative to the limitations of one’s present knowledge. That is the trap that modern science has fallen into - that they became too comfortable with fixed ideas for too long, that when something new was discovered which totally shattered their old ways of understanding, they were forced to change their views. This has happened again and again in science. You may have certain limited knowledge, but if you start clinging to your knowledge, you become dogmatic. That is why I had said that unless one has tremendous awareness, this is almost certain to happen if you try to organize any group who will function as a kind of authority as to what should and should not be accepted as “scientific”.
Science is an evidence based system. It is not fixed or static, but it is dynamic and evolves. As we gather more and more evidence, we refine our theories and understanding about reality. It is because of this that science can never make any absolute statements on the nature of reality, because there is always the possibility of new discoveries which can change our worldview dramatically.
Simply put, science is about our observable and measurable universe, and draws inferences from observations. The current theories and understanding of science is based on everything that is observable and measurable today, and whatever statements science makes about our observable world are valid. Science todays deals with macro cosmic phenomena like black holes, nebulas, stars to the microscopic electrons, subatomic particles, quantum forces. The current theories of science explain every phenomena that is observable and are the best explanations for what we already know.
These theories are rigorously tested and refined to the accuracy of being able to give predictions of phenomena with an accuracy of one in a trillionth.
Obviously, what we know so far is not wrong, but is not the complete picture either. Science is not a perfect system of knowledge and our understanding still has a long way to go, but there is absolutely no doubt that science is the best system of knowledge we have today. It easily blows every previous means of knowledge we had philosophical speculation and religion. I often hear irrational people exaggerate the imperfections of science, and then conclude that science is just another opinion, guessing or dogma like a religion. These people are quite frankly idiots, if science was just another opinion, guess work or dogma, then we would not have nuclear bombs, space satellites and microchips. Religion or philosophy could not give us these things, because they were inadequate systems of knowledge. Science is our best ever attempt at gathering knowledge about reality.
Spirituality is the latest field that has come under the domain of science, and already we have made huge leaps in our understanding of the spiritual sciences. We will make dramatic progress in the 21st century in research on spirituality, understanding consciousness better, the mechanisms by which mind and matter interact and the structure of reality. We are already far ahead of our ancients in our knowledge in every field. We have learned all we can from the ancients - it is time to progress.
Not religious, but it is certainly mysticism. Mysticism just refers to any approach towards coming to a direct experience of one’s original. Even Zen, which is not so much focused on the intellect, which is very grounded and down to earth - can be called a path of mysticism.
Mysticism obviously means communion with god, higher power and the universe, such as in Vedanta one communes with Brahman through contemplation, meditation and worship, or in Sufism where the Sufi mystics attempt to obliterate the ego to unite with god.
Although this far more closer to spirituality, it still has an element or naivity about it, in that it strongly interprets the ultimate reality in emotional language and through human-centric view and attitude and romanticizes the whole thing.
Scientific spirituality does no such thing, it acknowledges that there is an unknown and absolute substance of reality which permeates everything and which is a supreme power and organizing force that maintains the entire universe. It is also acknowledges that we can tap into this great power. However, it does not worship it, as much as it does not worship gravity. We personalize this power and start to give it human attributes and involve it in our human affairs. One day science may understand power too.
The occult too, has a scientific dimension - though it is difficult to tell the difference in so called “occultism” between what is science and what is simply superstition. The only way to be able to tell one from the other is to become deeply involved in those processes - and yoga, particularly the traditions of tantra yoga, have thoroughly explored the occult.
Tantra is basically mythologized Yoga. It is Yoga + Vedanta + Puranas. Samkhya-Yoga on the other hand is scientific Yoga, it has no place or gods and goddesses, rituals, spells, sacrifices. Likewise, modern science has no place for Tantra.
"What we can regulate among spiritual teachers in an SRO is ethical conduct, to prevent the formation of cults. "
If the same attitude existed in India - by now almost every tradition would have been condemned as a “cult”. Because nowhere on the face of the planet has the exploration of man’s inner being been so deeply investigated as it has happened in India. India has channeled all of it’s efforts, almost exhausted all of it’s efforts, in the work of the transformation of consciousness. They have explored almost every possibility one can imagine. According to Western standards - what Jesus was doing was certainly creating a “cult”. What Gautama Buddha was doing was also creating a “cult”. Both were teaching things which were against what was commonly accepted amongst traditions, and because of this, both were condemned. Buddhism and Jainism do not accept the authority of the Vedas - those who are orthodox Hindus certainly see them as “cults”. The tantric traditions - which have also not always accepted the authority of the Vedas, which were tremendously radical and revolutionary in their approach - can also be seen as “cults”. Especially when some traditions have been doing things which otherwise have always been traditionally seen as forbidden and immoral - such as using sex as a tool towards one’s enlightenment, the consumption of meat, and so on. Tantra has seen that even those things which are ordinarily condemned - if you approach them with a certain awareness, with a meditative consciousness, they too can be useful to one’s enlightenment. And rather than condemning the ways of the body - Tantra has like no other tradition - seen the body as helpful to one’s awakening rather than something that needs to be condemned and repressed.
Just about anything which is too different from what is commonly accepted, and which you dislike, can be called a “cult”.[/quote]
I absolutely agree, nowhere else in the world has the study of spirituality been so concentrated as it has been in India. Modern spirituality is heavily indebted to India. But India is no longer relevant and it is a dying civilization. We have learned all we can from India in the 20th century, it is time no move and make progress. There are many things we know today that the ancients masters did not know, such as steady state physics, electronics. We must stop living in the past - and march ahead into the future. There is nothing more we can learn from India.
