Hold your spiritual philosophy lightly (and more)...

 

One of the useful things I got from spending several decades working in the social sciences was seeing the importance of holding onto theories very lightly and being prepared to let go of one theory in favour of a better one when the data supported it.

Although this is a drastic simplification, the process went something like this:

    • You study some aspect of the world that you want to understand better.

    • If there is currently no adequate theory that helps in understanding that aspect of the world then you develop one.

    • From that theory you derive one or more measurable, testable hypotheses.

    • You do an experiment to gather data that indicates whether your hypothesis is correct and therefore whether your theory needs changing or can stay as it is, for now…

So far this is a brief description of a fairly standard way of doing science, known as the hypothetico-deductive method as described by Karl Popper among others. However, having developed a theory and tested it once or twice, what often happens is that the researcher can get very attached to it and defend it strongly against changes – part of the conservative resistance to change referred to by Thomas Kuhn. 

What is supposed to happen is that, if someone else comes along, decides to test your theory and finds data that is inconsistent with it, you let go of your old theory and move to the new one. But scientists have egos too and are often reluctant to let go of their favourite theory(-ies). When people hold on strongly to a favourite theory, they are no longer looking at or trying to understand what is, but how they would like things to be. This process is perhaps even clearer in the world of politics where attacking others’ ideas and defending one’s own viewpoint is an all-too-familiar public process. Evidence in favour of one’s favourite idea is championed and inconvenient evidence is ignored or even buried!

The point I want to make is that I think the same process goes on with ideas and philosophies that link consciousness or spirituality with other aspects of the world. There are many such philosophies. One or two of the more popular ones include monism (or non-duality or advaita), dualism (or pluralism or dvaita), idealism, materialism (or physicalism), pantheism, panentheism, polytheism, panpsychism, panspiritism, pandeism and many more. I won’t describe all of these theories (that would take an encyclopaedia!), but just one or two to give a flavour of them:

Panpsychism, for example, proposes that consciousness pervades the universe. This doesn’t mean that everything is conscious. However, the theory does say that the fundamental constituents of reality, perhaps electrons and quarks, have simple forms of experience and the complex experience of the human or animal brain is somehow derived from the experience of the brain’s basic components.

Monism (or non-duality or advaita), on the other hand, proposes that consciousness is fundamental to everything and that everything is derived from consciousness, including our subjective reality. Most of those who support this philosophical theory also say that there is no beginning or end to consciousness. Death is only the end of our physical body, but not the end of our consciousness. 

Panentheism. Unlike pantheism, which proposes that God (or the universal mind or universal spirit etc.) and the universe are identical, panentheism proposes that universal spirit is present everywhere and at the same time transcends everything created. In other words, while pantheism says that everything is God and God is everything, panentheism says that God is in the universe and is also greater than the universe.

How is one to choose between theories? 

I want to look at a couple of ideas about choosing theories or philosophies because we’re attracted to ideas like enlightenment, spiritual growth, awakening, personal development or similar. There are many factors that will influence the theories and philosophies that we like and use, but here I’m only going to look at a couple and leave aside all the social and cultural factors, for example. 

I’ve already mentioned that I think it helps our understanding of the world to hold on to theories lightly and I suggested that this applies equally to ideas related to consciousness or spirituality. To that I would add that it is also important to choose a theory that does not limit or place tight constraints on how you see the world. I’ll use the example of materialism (or physicalism), which holds that only matter and the forces that act on matter (gravity, electro-magnetic radiation, strong nuclear force and weak nuclear force) exist, and that everything arises from these and the interactions between them. In many ways it is a very successful theory but it runs into problems in some aspects of life. For example, there are many scientific studies of what these days are called psi phenomena – telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis and more. These studies suggest that it may well be possible for one mind to communicate with another through means unknown to the current body of materialist knowledge, for example. 

Whether you agree with psi phenomena or not, many properly conducted studies exist. Yet there are many mainstream materialist scientists who not only refuse to accept that such phenomena can exist, but who even refuse to look at the scientific publications that support them because they say that these phenomena simply cannot exist and therefore there is no need for them to look at the studies. 

Materialism also runs into problems with explaining consciousness, which materialists say can only emerge from the interaction of neurons, or even that consciousness is an illusion. It also has problems with near death experiences (NDEs) and out-of-body experiences (said to be hallucinations), mediumship (said to be delusions or the result of dishonesty) and so on. This may seem like an extreme example, but I would suggest that all theories, to some degree or another, can limit how we see or understand the world and can keep us from engaging with practices that may in fact be helpful or insightful.

I used that extreme example just to illustrate how minds can be closed because of the philosophy one holds. I doubt that many of those seeking enlightenment or awakening proceed from a starting point of materialism though. More likely would be one of the philosophies that includes awakening to a deeper reality as a possible outcome. There are many of these too so I’ll just use the example of the traditional Hindu approach of Advaita Vedanta, which has become more popular in the West in recent decades. One of the most influential adherents was the teacher Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi who taught the core advaitan idea that consciousness is not just fundamental to everything but that consciousness is all there is. He said that it is possible to awaken to this fundamental reality through the practice of self-enquiry. Briefly, this involves asking “Who is having this thought?” every time a thought appears in the mind. Eventually, he said, the self (with a small ‘s’, which we might call the ego) will disappear, leaving only the universal Self (with a large ’S’). 

I want to make the possibly controversial point that one can gain benefit from the self-enquiry practice without taking on board the whole philosophy of Advaita Vedanta. And for those who don’t get on with self-enquiry, taking on the whole philosophy is likely to close the mind to other potentially useful practices, such as meditation or yoga or qi gong or whatever. I have heard and met people who have spent many years pursuing a particular practice, unhappy because they felt it was getting them nowhere, but they did it because they were convinced (supported by the assurances of a charismatic teacher) that the philosophy was correct. Without the philosophy they may have simply dropped the practice (whichever one they were doing – self-enquiry was just another example) and moved on to something they were better suited to.

In summary:

If you have found a philosophy and associated practices that you find congenial then obviously you should stick with it. However, I would still suggest that you hold on to theories about consciousness or spirituality lightly and only as long as they remain useful, moving on if another theory gives a better or more complete view of the world and your experience of it.

I also suggest that you choose a theory with the fewest constraints; a theory that does not claim, for example, that some things cannot exist just because the theory says they can’t.

I also favour small-scale theories related to practice, rather than large-scale theories about life, the universe and everything (Adams, 2001). Meditation can bring inner peace and helpful insights, whatever large-scale philosophy it is associated with.

Bibliography

Adams, D. (2001). Life, the Universe and Everything. Pan Books.

Bird, A. (2022) "Thomas Kuhn", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, E. N. Zalta (ed.) https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/thomas-kuhn/

Cardeña, E. (2018). The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review. American Psychologist. 73(5), 663-677. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0000236 

Chalmers, D. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press.

Popper, K. R. (1959). The logic of scientific discovery. University Press.

Silberstein, M. (2017). Panentheism, neutral monism, and advaita vedanta. Zygon 52(4):1123-1145 

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I have tried to make it easy for people to respond to this if they wish. I only retain comments that are on-topic though.

Originally, this was only going to be a short blog entry so I also reserve the right to fiddle with it if I can think of ways to make it clearer...