This is Part 2 of a series in Patheos.com in which Philosopher Ken Wilber tries to answer some "Big Questions" of Life. The annotations are by
Julius-Kei Kato
(The main text is of Ken Wilber. The subheadings, emboldened and underlined parts are added by the annotator. My (jkk) further reflections and observations are in italicized form.)
Source in the public domain (accessed 2020-10-08): https://www.patheos.com/blogs/kenwilberwakeupgrowup/2014/04/can-we-prove-the-existence-of-god-the-big-question-series-question-2/
It always comes down to that: “How can you prove the existence of Spirit or God if you’re so convinced that it exists?” Part of the problem is that we tend to try to prove Sprit’s existence with tools that can’t actually do the job. And we tend to be unaware of the type of tools that can prove Spirit’s existence. So I’ll run through what some of those are, and give an example of what’s involved.
[jkk] This is especially fascinating for me because it is usually said, “we cannot prove the existence of Spirit (or of God).” I myself also say this and I still maintain that there is no direct, empirical way to “prove God” such as can be done in empirical experiments. However, here Ken Wilber claims that there is a “kind of” scientific way to prove the “greater reality” (the realm that transcends our physical reality). I encourage you to reflect on whether this proposed method is “scientific”for you. After all, in our secularized age, the “scientific” way of making one’s points is deemed to be the best way.
The Method to Access the
Spirit-Dimension
So it’s actually very experimental
and very scientific. It rests on the fact that there is a scientific method,
and this method can be applied to any number of domains. It can be
applied to the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of contemplation.
So what is this method? Very
briefly, it has three major components. [#1 “Injunction” or “Eperiment”]
It has an injunction or experiment or exemplar, which is always in the form
of “if you want to know this, do this.” And once you do that, it results in
an experience, or what William James called a datum, or an
illumination—some sort of [#2 Experience] direct immediate
experience. And that’s the second strand. And then that experience or
data is [#3 Verification] checked with others to make sure that
they get the same results, to make sure that you’re not hallucinating or
getting it wrong or somehow confused.
So let’s say, using the eye of flesh, we want to know if it’s raining outside. Very simply, we go to the window and look. That’s the injunction—if you want to know if it’s raining outside, go to the window and look. We look, and yes it does indeed seem to be raining. That’s our experience, our data, our illumination. We do the injunction and we have an experience, we see the data. To make sure that we’re not hallucinating or otherwise mistaken, we ask someone else to take a look as well. They go to the window and yup, they see it raining too. So that’s our confirmation or verification, our third major strand.
[jkk] Remember the three phases: #1 Experiment - #2 Experience - #3 Verification of the Experience (with others who are having the same or similar experiences). That does seem like a “scientific” way to prove something, right?
Further Elaboration
All science has those three
strands. When applied to the eye of flesh we get physics, chemistry, biology,
and so on. When applied to the eye of mind we get things like logic and
mathematics. But what’s not often understood is that it can be applied to the
eye of contemplation as well. And here it offers proof of the existence of
Spirit, every bit as real as rain or mathematics.
So what we’re talking about is that
there’s sensory experience, there’s mental experience, and there’s spiritual
experience, and each of these experiences give particular types of data or
information or knowledge. Too often we have attempted to try to prove the
existence of Spirit by using the eye of flesh and the eye of mind. Aristotle’s
proof of God, he gave five proofs, and they were all logical. But that won’t
get it—it doesn’t touch Spirit, it doesn’t activate the spiritual dimension in
us.
So if we want to see how it can
operate in a spiritual practice, we can take Zen as an example. The injunction
here, the practice or exemplar, is zazen or meditation or
contemplation. You’re taught to sit in a relaxed position, rest the mind, and
focus it on one item. It could be following the breath, or it might be an
inquiry like “who am I?” And this is the first strand, the injunction or
activity or exemplar—if you want to know whether Spirit is real, do this.
After anywhere from several months
to a year or two, you will start having a series of experiences, interior data
or illuminations. These profound experieces or experieces of a spiritual nature
are called kensho, which means “seeing into true nature.” This is
strand two, the direct experience Spirit itself—naked, unmediated, real, and
direct. This direct religious experience is said to be of Spirit itself. Even
in the case of individuals who have a Ph.D in science and who experience kensho,
over 95% report that kensho is as real as anything that they
study in conventional science. It’s a very powerful, convincing experience.
And just recently someone had an
experience that for some reason made all the news, a neuroscientist who had a
near death experience, but it was so real to him that he was simply,
absolutely, 100% convinced that this was a real experience, as real as anything
he had ever experienced. That’s exactly the same kind of feeling that mystics
have when they have a kensho, or a mystical experience, or an
experience of oneness or unity. And he said he couldn’t find it described
anywhere until he was looking through some Christian mysticism books and he
found an explanation that spoke of infinite darkness suffused with luminosity.
And he said that was it exactly! Anyone who knows the stages of meditation will
recognize that as a causal state, it’s described that way in every major
meditative tradition the world over. But of course we’ve so forgotten about
this in the West that we just don’t know where to look. So he was completely
confused until he found that one particular explanation.
Check with the Community of
Practitioners
After the individual has had their
unity experience, their awakening experience, just to make sure, they check
with a spiritual teacher and a community of practitioners. Now this means all
those who have completed the first two strands. If you want to vote on whether
the Pythagorean theory is real, you have to learn mathematics, and then learn
the Pythagorean theorem, and once you have completed the injunction and have
had the experience of looking at the triangle and looking at the Pythagorean
theorem, then you’re allowed to vote and confirm or not
confirm whether it’s real. Most people who do that report that the Pythagorean
Theorem is real.
But the same thing is true in any other scientific experiment, and it’s true for this interior science of contemplation. So you check it with a spiritual teacher and a community of practitioners, all those who have completed the first two strands of injunction and illumination, just to make sure you’re not hallucinating or otherwise confused, just like in all the other sciences. If their illumination, the discovery of their own True Self that is one with Spirit, matches those in a larger community of knowledge-holders, then their kensho (見性 Japanese, “seeing the true nature of things”) is passed and their realization is confirmed.
[jkk] I want to underline the fact that Wilber calls the study of the transcendent realm the “interior science of contemplation.” By that, he implies that there is this realm of Spirit, this transcendent dimension that we can directly know, experience, and validate (the existence of) through methods and a process that are quite scientific. What is “the community of practitioners” anyway? In practically every religious tradition (Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc.), there are groups of people (both in the past and in the present) who have had direct, religious-spiritual experiences of the Sacred and the Transcendent. These people were/are able to have these spiritual experiences through methods of spiritual practice such as meditation, service, ethical living, training in compassion, etc. that are time-tested and proven in these religious traditions to effectively transform people and lead them to wisdom, peace, compassion and authentic happiness.
Direct Experience – Public
Knowledge
So notice this is a real science, a
direct and immediate 1st-person experience. It’s not anything
taken on faith or mere belief, but a direct realization. And this is true
whether the contemplation is Christian, or Buddhist, or Jewish, or Islamic, or
Hindu, and so on. And this realization proves that Spirit is just as
real as mathematics, or logic, or rain, or rocks. And those who
have had that experience, even if they have Ph.Ds in science, take it as being
as real as anything that they know. So it’s as real as “real” has any
meaning. It’s a direct injunction, giving immediate data or illumination,
and checked with a community of the adequate.
This is why contemplative knowledge is public knowledge, in both the East and the West it has been passed down for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. That’s not private knowledge. Anything that can be trained and passed down is public, and it all reaches that same conclusion: God is real, and tat tvam asi—you are that.
[jkk] Let me continue to comment on the nature of the time-tested spiritual practices of the world’s religious-spiritual traditions. Studies have been done of these spiritual practices and one can say that across the various religious-spiritual traditions of the world, there are striking commonalities in the spiritual practices that are encouraged and taught in order to be spiritually transformed. One notable study is Roger Walsh, M.D. Ph.D.’s Essential Spirituality: The Seven Central Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind. There Walsh distills many of the practices from various religious-spiritual traditions into seven general principles that spiritual practitioners across the ages have observed to be continually transformed and renewed.
Wilber and Walsh also emphasize
that spiritual transformation and direct experience of the Sacred NEED NOT BE
just taken on faith or believed in blindly (as is often encouraged by religious
institutions) without proof. Wilber and Walsh encourage people to, as it were, “check
it out for themselves” by actually engaging in the time-tested spiritual practices
because if they do, the practitioners will in time experience for themselves
the truth that there is indeed a spiritual realm and that realm will transform
the person who wakes up to it and continually grows more fully into it.
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