On Being A Mystical Scientist

                                On Being a Mystical Scientist

 

The 21^st century is calling for a particular kind of person and mind, this is because the intensity, demands, and pace of life, coupled with the relationship man is developing with his technology, warrant a person and mind that can simultaneously be rational as well as intuitive, a mind that is logical and empirical, and one that sees, feels, and senses beyond the senses, one that has mystical apperception.

 

There is an artistic, aesthetic aspect to science, a craft to the practice and visions of such highly technical professions as surgeons, psychotherapists, architects and engineers. I’ll never forget my work as a surgical assistant, working within the craft, technique and artistry of cardiovascular, orthopedic, plastic, ENT, and several other specialties of the surgical arena.

 

 

The hands and instincts of some of the surgeons was pure artistry, their diagnostic skills of assessing and intervening in the moment of a surgical crisis, was akin to watching a Picasso choose which color and brush stroke to use from some deep wellspring of intuitive imagination. They were certainly not thinking rationally and planning their next move, these were times of pure mystical knowing. Of course their years of education and training go into moments like that, but at those spontaneous moments, there is no time or means to recall something they read in a book!

 

 

Conversely, an artist has to learn the science and theory behind their craft, they must spend years (the usual number is 10 to be exact), in painstaking discipline of technique, science, and practical application of their creative medium. Only then is there hope of true mastery in the sense of a fusion between technique and the creative, spontaneous impulse that is the mark of an original master.

 

In our times, science and technology have moved exponentially toward a unifying approach and methodology that combines cross disciplinary domains and synthesizes fields and practices that, in the bygone era of extreme specialization and compartmentalization, now converge, cross-pollinate, and beg, borrow, and steal from anything and anyone that will add to greater understanding and control of our world.

 

There is a current case up for ethical consideration in which a baby will be conceived in vivo with DNA from 3 different people; a father’s sperm, a mother’s egg, and another mother who has specific DNA that will compensate for the egg mother’s defective DNA. To say the least, this is raising some eyebrows! The science of how to pull off such a feat is a good example of 2 or more disciplines working in tandem, i.e. genetics, biology, biomedical ethics, and engineering.

 

 

Scientists in Germany have switched on an experiment they hope will advance the quest for nuclear fusion, considered a clean and safe form of nuclear power. Scientists pushed the button Wednesday to inject a tiny amount of hydrogen into the Wendelstein 7-X device at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald.

A massive microwave array then heated up the hydrogen, turning it into a super-hot gas known as plasma similar to that found in the sun.

The Greifswald device won't generate energy but instead tests a technology that may be used to hold plasma in place in future reactors.

Advocates acknowledge that nuclear fusion is probably many decades away, but argue it could replace fossil fuels and conventional nuclear fission reactors.

 

 

This type of science requires the vision of a mystic to be able to harness the power of the Sun. It is not unlike Einstein’s day dreaming mystical imagination about light:

Einstein, at the age of 16, imagined chasing after a beam of light. “.a paradox upon which I had already hit at the age of sixteen: If I pursue a beam of light with the velocity c (velocity of light in a vacuum), I should observe such a beam of light as an electromagnetic field at rest though spatially oscillating. There seems to be no such thing, however, neither on the basis of experience nor according to Maxwell's equations. From the very beginning it appeared to me intuitively clear that, judged from the standpoint of such an observer, everything would have to happen according to the same laws as for an observer who, relative to the earth, was at rest. For how should the first observer know or be able to determine, that he is in a state of fast uniform motion? One sees in this paradox the germ of the special relativity theory is already contained."

 

Granted this is the day dream of a consummate genius, but it is a day dream non-the-less, and it points to how science is inundated with imagination, spirituality, creativity, spontaneity, and the intuition that are hallmarks of the mystics. Indeed, all the major physicists of the quantum/relativity revolution in science such as Einstein, Eddington, Bohr, Planck, Heisenberg and Pauli were avowed mystics!

 

How can this be that the hardest of the hard sciences engender a mystical perspective? I believe it is because both mystics and scientists are interested in the nature of reality and the practical, unmediated experience of how to contact and bring into expression that reality into every day human life.

 

 

Scientists create models, theory, technique, and technology whereby they get closer and closer to the essential nature of nature. Similarly, ‘mysticism’ can be thought of as a constellation of distinctive practices, discourses, texts, institutions, traditions, and experiences aimed at human transformation, variously defined in different traditions. Both science and mysticism are interested in the unity of nature, the unity of human experience. Both science and mysticism use extra sensory means; scientists use tools that extend their senses objectively, mystics use contemplative tools such as meditation, and prayer that extend their senses subjectively.

 

 

Modern physicists are interested in a theory of everything that incorporates the 4 known physical forces of strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravity. They are trying to marry Quantum Field Theory with Relativity Theory, this is termed a “Grand Unified Theory.” Mystics transcend traditional religion (often at their own peril), by contacting the unifying principles beneath all religions.

 

Both science and mysticism deal with the unknown. Scientists endeavor to unlock the mysteries of nature, mystics make contact with the mystery of the divine. The word mysticism is derived from the Greek word μυω, meaning "to conceal."

 

We are called, on in these times, to look for ways to unify, be it political, social, technological, spiritual, or scientific. This is because we are reaching heights of fragmentation, compartmentalization, and polarity that warrant grave concern for our species, the phenomenon of terrorism is the best example.

 

I’ve always tried to be a synthesizer, and my creative contribution is in large part, to be able to help bring seemingly disparate fields of thought and experience into alignment and correlative balance. This is not to say that related things can be reduced to each other, science cannot be reduced to spirit or vice versa, matter is not reducible to energy, but there sure the hell is a STRONG correlation as in E=MC2!

 

Objectivity exists, subjectivity exists, there are individual and collective aspects of both, but they are not reducible to one another. This is Ken Wilber’s great contribution to our times, and I believe it warrants a Nobel Prize/Academy Award etc…it’s a huge contribution that has not caught on near to the extent that it should.

 

So bring your mystical self to bear on your science, and be scientific in your approach to spirit, don’t practice blind faith, that leads to violence!