Venetian, Science is applying itself to a greater understanding of spiritual matters.There are answers. Information does not appear by magic, It has to be painstakingly discovered. Spiritual messages are being given that do "tie up" with recorded history. Love is normally given by spirit as the supreme objective. A question is why love. Is it an energy that is a requirement of the universe. If so how could the universe use it. To say that its up to the individual to decide for themselves is very limiting. If a child in school knows the purpose of education, the out come is more successful. I believe there is a common purpose for our existence.
My own PoV is quite near to that. I'm not quite sure if I'd call it "science" that gets the greater understanding. I agree that there are answers. I believe there is a common purpose for our existence. The problem is that, well at least two problems:
1. I actually feel satisfied that, for me, I have these answers. In my youth I had them as questions, and to my satisfaction they are answered. The problem is that others also have 'their' answers, and they differ to mine. So unlike hard science, which progresses forward largely as one body, spiritual answers rely much more on intuition, discernment, etc. You can't just find the answer and then dispense it to the world as "information" they'll instantly accept.
2. Similar to problem '1', apart from people getting competing and different answers, when spiritual truths really do seem well-documented and well-founded (perhaps even involving some hard scientific research at times), many, probably the vast majority of people, still don't accept this 'information' as it doesn't fit into their world-view (or comparative lack of one).
V
I actually feel satisfied that, for me, I have these answers. In my youth I had them as questions, and to my satisfaction they are answered. The problem is that others also have 'their' answers, and they differ to mine.
Doesn't this suggest that these kind of answers are more like metaphors than facts?
So unlike hard science, which progresses forward largely as one body, spiritual answers rely much more on intuition, discernment, etc.
Mmm... I'm not so sure that science progresses forward largely as one body and it doesn't rely largely on intuition. There is, and always has been a divide in science between those who see science proving a material universe to be the ultimate and mindless cause of life and those that see science to be process of discovery of the intrinsic order of the universe. And that when this second view is held there is room for all sorts of possibilities.
...apart from people getting competing and different answers, when spiritual truths really do seem well-documented and well-founded (perhaps even involving some hard scientific research at times), many, probably the vast majority of people, still don't accept this 'information' as it doesn't fit into their world-view (or comparative lack of one).
I think there are many aspects of both science as well as spiritual belief that are metaphor, allegory, collective self delusion etc as much as enlightened discovery.
What the scientific approach does offer is methods that can test certain ideas quite effectively. However, what can be tested is limited by many factors, not least, what people are willing to put resources into testing. e.g. drugs companies will spend money on testing drugs but it is much harder getting funds to test therapies that don't drive industries that have the resources, and are subject to regulation of the pharmaceutical industry.
The scientific empirical method of testing ideas, while there is no denying, has its faults, does have some highly valuable aspects. One significant reason is that authority of truth is subject to independent testing. And this independent testing then makes the ideas univerally applicable. When this comes to testing meditation techniques' usefulness in therapy, for example, the meditation technique then becomes independent of a religious power structure.
In time it will be interesting to see where this process goes. I'd say it challenges fundamentalist views from all quarters; those who confuse metaphor and fact and those who confuse relative and absolute, often for dubious motives and/or outdated reasons.
Norbu
Posted by Venetian: I actually feel satisfied that, for me, I have these answers. In my youth I had them as questions, and to my satisfaction they are answered. The problem is that others also have 'their' answers, and they differ to mine.
Doesn't this suggest that these kind of answers are more like metaphors than facts?
That's often the case, as we see all around us with competing world-views. But it's not always the case IMHO, no. This is where philosophy and the philosophical approach, based upon human intellect only and its permanent limitations falls short of mystical experiences and the Union with Oneness at the heart of all real Truth ... which cannot be conveyed in words, either as description, or philosophically, or poetically, and etc. It's where words and intellect end, and Truth is there. Truth not as a belief-system learned and quoted, but as lived, experienced, known, but impossible to convey in words to another.
These 'answers' are hardly my exclusive property, but are arrived at by many and through many different spiritual journeys. It's the learn-and-quote human-intellect based religious approaches which we may indeed call 'more like metaphors'.
V
This is where philosophy and the philosophical approach, based upon human intellect only and its permanent limitations falls short of mystical experiences and the Union with Oneness at the heart of all real Truth ... which cannot be conveyed in words, either as description, or philosophically, or poetically, and etc. It's where words and intellect end, and Truth is there. Truth not as a belief-system learned and quoted, but as lived, experienced, known, but impossible to convey in words to another.
Isn't this: "which cannot be conveyed in words," the very reason why the words that attempt to describe "it" can never be more than metaphors? This includes scientific description, and poetic description. This, IMO, is all philosophy can ever say: that the ultimate Truth or whatever words you use to describe "it" can never be facsimiles of what "it" is.
The trouble is people; interpret words to be more than this. They confuse convention that describes relative truth as an objective truth (i.e. matter is self existant and consciousness is a special function of the brain) or they confuse what is a special form of convention used to describe ultimate reality as a facsimile of it. In both cases, IMO, these are different kinds of fundamentalism.
Words used to describe ultimate reality can never be more than "fingers pointing at the moon." Just because I don't believe words to be any more than signposts to the experience of reality I don't in any way deny the reality of the experience, the reality of the mind that has this experience or the objective nature of the experience. I am just, perhaps, a little more reluctant than some to assert what this mind, this experience and this reality "is" because I am, perhaps also, a little over-sensitive to the problems that misinterpretation of language used to describe "it" can lead to.
This is because fundamentalist misinterpretation of language, by making it more than various categories metaphor, can lead to war, the oppression of peoples, of women, of the weak, of people with darker skins, of the sick, and the socially oppressed as well as lead to mental torment of those who subscribe to these exaggerated views.
Ego driven by fear of seeing its own selfless nature declares it knows ultimate truth. Ego clings to words that become shackles of servitude belonging to the graven image to which it sells the soul. In a vain attempt to escape its own voidness, ego exchanges a "pearl of great price" for suffering.
Submitting to the tyranny of external material objects as cause for all experience, we are helpless in the face of suffering caused by conditions. If we submit to the tyranny of subjective experience we are lost in our own solipsistic dream worlds that are always frustrated by the evidence of our senses. And, if we submit to the tyranny of unity, purpose becomes a recovery from a pointless fall from grace.
This doesn't mean that ideas like "oneness," "individuality" and "objective existence" are not useful signposts on the path to underdstanding... liberation even?
Norbu
Yep, that's all true.
V