When Science and Spirituality Combine

Spiritualosophy

May 29

We are part of this Universe; we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the Universe is in us.

I remember my first spiritual experience clearly. I was a 29 year old atheist grappling with chronic boredom and a growing sense of emptiness when I accidentally brushed up against something profound, mysterious, and unimaginably beautiful. In that moment, I experienced peace and wordless understanding. Everything suddenly made perfect sense; so-called problems melted away and I found, to my surprise, that the emptiness in the core of my being was brimming with wonder, awe, and deep reverence for the elegant patterning of the Universe. If I’m being totally honest, the experience eludes definition. Trying to grasp it with the mind is like gripping a fistful of sand: it trickles out, leaving behind an imperfect and incomplete memory. If I had to describe it, I’d say it felt like “breaking through” or “waking up from a dream.”

In the years since, I learned that this kind of experience isn’t uncommon. People have them all the time, though the catalyst for these experiences varies greatly. For some, the experience occurs after hitting bottom or going through a “dark night of the soul.” For others, pondering mythology, mystical poetry, or scripture does the trick. It can be found in meditation, by spending time in nature, reading philosophy, and contemplating ideas that stretch the mind to its limits - and beyond. Whatever the means, every spiritual experience ends in the same way: the individual pierces through the surface-level appearance of things and plunges deeper into its essence or truth. For a brief moment, one moves through the unreal and reconnects, if only briefly, to the ultimate Source of all that is.

In my travels, I have found no better way to incur such an experience than by contemplating the vastness, complexity, and elegance of the Universe. It's no coincidence that our ancestors felt drawn to the night sky, that the stars and constellations became the first human myths, and that those myths evolved into religion. Even back then we sensed that we are part of something greater than ourselves. We simply couldn’t fathom how much greater this something is! Forget the entire Universe for a moment and consider our galactic neighborhood, the Milky Way. Measuring 120,000 light years in diameter, it contains between 100 and 400 billions stars held together in a spiral orbit by the super-massive black hole at its center. Oh, and the entire Milky Way is hurtling through space toward our nearest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, at 110 kilometers per second.

Here’s the kicker: even at this velocity, the collision won't occur for another 4 billion years. If that doesn’t blow your mind, dive down into the subatomic and you will find a micro-cosmos filled with paradoxical phenomena. Particles pop in and out of existence and occupy multiple positions simultaneously, and matter, it turns out, is composed almost entirely of emptiness. It should come as no surprise that the greatest scientific and philosophical thinkers developed a spirituality of their own. Many even came to believe in God, though the term can be misleading.

Einstein’s God, for example, has little in common with the Abrahamic God of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Rather than envisioning an invisible bearded sky-daddy, Einstein and others came to regard the universe itself as a living being animated and guided by a divine intellect. Far from being at odds with spirituality, science actually complements it. When you combine the two intelligently, you arrive at a perspective called “pantheism.”

If a greater understanding of cosmology, biology, and the human mind fill you with awe, reverence, and wonder, then you might be a pantheist yourself.

What is Pantheism?

Don't let the "theism" fool you: pantheism isn't a religion. There's no doctrine, church, or holy book. Pantheists don't worship Yahweh or take the Bible as literal truth. Pantheism is a perspective that recognizes a fundamental unity underlying the appearance of multiplicity. All things spring from and return to the same Source, and are at once interconnected and interdependent. This includes minerals, animals, plants, planets, stars, black holes, and humankind.

As author Paul Harrison writes in his book, “Elements of Pantheism”, this recognition awakens “feelings of awe and wonder and love and acceptance and gratitude that Jews, Christians, and Muslims feel toward their gods.” Hence the “theism”. Some pantheists regard the universe itself as God, while others do away with the “G” word altogether for personal reasons. No matter: the key to pantheism is that Nature and the Universe assume the primacy typically reserved for God in theistic religions. John Toland, the Irish writer who coined the term pantheism back in 1705, defined a pantheist as a person who believes “in no other eternal being but the universe.” That might be the most concise definition I’ve come across yet.

In practical terms, the star-studded firmament is the pantheist's Sistine Chapel; the secluded wood is her temple; and science is (part of) her scripture. Viewed through this lens, the Abrahamic God and all other anthropomorphic (humanized) deities are rightfully seen as metaphors for the Universe and, by extension, Nature as a whole. The parallels are compelling. God is everywhere at all times, all-knowing, and all-powerful. The same can be said of Nature, which contains and is present in all of Creation. God is an intelligent designer. So is Nature, though she employs a different, more painstaking method of creation: trial and error. Following this process, Nature uses simple matter to create ever more complex and marvelous forms, of which humankind is but one.

In Romans 8:11, the Apostle Paul writes:

"The Spirit of God lives in you."

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist who hosts the TV show Cosmos, famously stated:

“We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us.”

God is a stickler for rules. The same can be said of Nature. But whereas God's rules seem arbitrary and subjective, the laws of Nature are measurable and reliable. Thanks to our cleverness, we humans have learned a great deal about these laws and leveraged that knowledge to our advantage. Last but not least, God loves to play favorites. Jews, Muslims, and Christians all claim to be His chosen people. The Universe plays favorites, too. It selected humankind to inherit spectacular gifts—self-awareness; a capacity for language, logic, and reason; built-in empathy; and a knack for team-work and collaboration. From a pantheist’s point of view, however, we are not special. Nature did not knowingly choose us to receive these gifts. Circumstances made us beneficiaries. We are free to use our inheritance however we like, and in so doing we decide our own fate. Sounds a lot like free will, doesn’t it? Another uncanny parallel.

But that’s where it stops, because unlike the Abrahamic God, Nature won't intervene on our behalf. She gave us powerful tools and set us loose without instruction or direction. It’s up to us to figure out how to use these tools properly and, more importantly, to what end. If we can figure this out, we may one day bring about everlasting peace on earth without the aid of an anthropomorphic deity.

Wouldn’t that be something?