This is part 2.2 of a 3-part series. In part 1 I tried to answer the question “What is Detachment?”. In part 2.1, I discussed whether awakened people can work miracles and began to describe what a genuinely scientific temperament is. In this article (part 2.2), I’ll dive deeper into the basis for that mindset and how it’s related to earnestness of quest, which is essential to seeing the path ahead for an awakened soul.
Alas! I’ve had to break this up into two further articles. So there’s gonna be a part 2.3 before you see part 3.
In the forthcoming part 3 of this series, I’ll describe Maya in a way that only true scientists can appreciate (whether or not you’re a professional scientist).
The Important Question
Here is a fact that every smitten young heart knows too well.
Failure is acceptable.
It lets us move on.
It’s always uncertainty
that holds us back.
That’s why we can
live with failure.
But not with uncertainty.
This is true with Science too.
In Part 2.1 of this series I talked about the scientific temperament and how it’s a critical requirement for a spiritual life (whether or not you are a professional scientist).
You cannot see the ultimate truth by abandoning science and logic. You can only get there by transcending them. These are two very different things.
Here I’ll describe that in a bit more detail. How can you tell if you have a genuinely scientific temperament?
I think I’ve boiled it down to the one question you can ask yourself to tease the answer out. It’s this:
Do you have a firm, almost visceral, unshakeable belief in causality or determinism (regardless of whether it’s true or not)?
The answer to this question, even if it surprises you, is YES!
That’s why we are each true scientists at our cores… though superficial smudges on our personality may delude us into believing and acting otherwise.
That is why every human is uniquely positioned to awaken and seek the truth.
What is Causality?
For those that are new to the word causality (easily confused visually with a very different word, casualty) — it simply means the principle that everything has a cause.
Note that causality is very different from teleology — which says that everything has a purpose. People confuse these two sometimes.
When people talk about things happening for a purpose, they’re claiming to justify an event, usually an adverse one, by appealing to a future contingent greater good.
It makes them say completely silly things like: “My car broke down on the way to the airport because [some higher power] wanted to save me from getting on that fated flight.”
More than one evil dictator in history is known to have been possessed of a strong sense of teleology.
Hitler thought his multiple close encounters with death were divine signals to allow him to doggedly pursue his nefarious efforts at ethnic cleansing.
Causality is different. It has scientific respectability, though not necessarily established as fact. Albert Einstein himself was an ardent proponent, conveying his conviction in no lesser words than “God does not play dice”.
If nothing, causality is a feeling deeply ingrained into our psyches so much so that we find it practically impossible to shake off.
Even though we may not consciously appreciate the fact, it is an unfounded belief that we all take for granted.
And although we may not always know the causes behind certain events, as humans we believe in our bones that every event has an antecedent cause.
To conceive of a cessation of causality would require a fundamental undoing of our world views.
It’s probably safe to say that anyone who would not be devastatingly shocked by the proposal that causality is not fact or that it is possible for Nature to be acausal at her core (meaning that some things, no matter how insignificant, could happen without a cause) has not truly understood its import.
Whether consciously or subconsciously, the razor of causality is the test we apply to every single thing to find out whether it makes sense. Whether to accept it as fact or not.
It is this feeling you tap into whenever someone tells you something incredible. It is the basis of an honest, genuine, and earnest quest for the truth.
It is the foundation of the healthy skepticism of anything anyone has ever told you until you verify the facts yourself.
Astute readers will instantly point out that this sense of skepticism includes beliefs in a personal god, a personal savior, promises of various gurus, or systems of thought and practice like yoga as a means for discovering truth.
That is correct. To truly understand the truth, you have to approach it with a completely open mind and genuine curiosity that remains unsatisfied with any explanation that isn’t supported by direct evidence. Nobody’s word should carry any weight a-priori, no matter how senior, how respected, revered or divine that person or being. No matter how well-intentioned their words may be.
If after having seen the truth yourself, on the way out, you happen to read what other people have said and find it to be in agreement with what you yourself have found, that’s awesome. But you must not let what you read or hear influence your search on the way in to find the truth.
These are exactly the characteristics that distinguish non-scientists from scientists. Non-scientists have an easier time accepting “facts” that they don’t yet know to be indubitably true. But true scientists don’t. We have to screen everything through the sieve of direct personal evidence to make sure that the thing we need to believe is not incompatible with our almost unshakeable faith in determinism or causality.
Now here’s the strange thing. This mindset — what I call a genuinely scientific temperament — I don’t know why not all grownups espouse it. At least not overtly…
… even though I have every reason to suspect that we all had it at some time of our lives. I haven’t met a single child who wasn’t genuinely curious…
…who just accepted facts without checking them out.
Sometimes you explain something to a child and you can feel its mental gears churning as it’s trying to make sense of what you said. As it’s trying to tie these new facts to its ground zero.
I feel like we were all wired for it. Genetically.
What happened? When exactly did we get brainwashed? When did we lose that sacred sentiment? How did some grownups get unwired?
Because I’ve known some people for whom this all-consuming belief in determinism is not a given and I’m just baffled at why they might ever feel that way.
But I’m also equally sure that they’re similarly baffled by my hardwired disbelief in a personal god or savior.
They’re probably going “I feel really sorry for this person who can’t bring himself to believe.”
That’s fine. But whatever the case, for a variety of reasons, I’m increasingly of the opinion that if you really want to have the genuinely scientific temperament, it’s possible to (re)cultivate it regardless of whether you remember having had it or not…
… just as Blaise Pascal once famously claimed that it’s possible to cultivate belief in God…
…even if you weren’t originally wired for it.
As to whether baseless belief is a good thing or not is another question.
In a different article, I’ll put forth my reasons for thinking why belief in a personal savior, unfortunately, dooms a person from attaining salvation —
Ironically, precisely the thing that their savior promises him or her!
But for now, note two things for the record:
- I’m not saying that determinism is necessarily correct. That’s irrelevant to what we’re talking about. All I’m saying is that whether determinism is true or not, people of a certain mindset (myself included) seem wired to assume it can’t be false… that everything that happens has been caused by something else. If we do accept acausality, we do so grudgingly, with a certain level of suppressed permanent cognitive discomfort, and on a case-by-case basis. Like agreeing to keep a needle in your brain.
- Also I’m most definitely not saying that scientists know what all the causes are. Just the fact that a scientist doesn’t know why something happened does not incline him or her to think that there must be no cause. In fact, that’s the whole appeal of science, the pleasure of discovering causes. The joy in discovering why something unfolds as it does.
We’ll come back to this idea in Part 2.3 of this series. It will lay the groundwork for a way to address the conflict in a rational, self-evident, scientific way.
.oOo.
