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Science and “Spirituality” #2
{a
note to the reader: a little later in our May
5 ’06 chat, we switched to considering suggestive parallels between
contemplative practice and science. In particular, Piet wanted to
discuss the
Chinese notion “Wu Wei,” which literally means “no action” but in fact
refers
to a range of ways of being that are considered more authentic than
more
typical ones based on action, struggle and grasping.}
Piet: I want to talk
about my Wu Wei understanding of a month ago, as being superseded but
yet logically
encompassed
by my current understanding. The more I see the parallel between
scientific
progress of wider and wider theories, as being analogous to my growing
Wu Wei
understanding, the more I see that I can apply to Wu Wei what I'm
applying to
science. Namely, predicting what will happen to science in the next few
hundred
years. So, in that way, from the bottom-up point of view for me to say
"A
ha! I have found a way to speed up spiritual growth!". And of course if
I
do that in too much of a project-oriented way, that would be a bad
thing. So
I'm beginning to see how not to do that, but I'm also beginning to see
how
something can survive from that.
Also … not just the
image of scientific progress
which I just described, but another image is that of accelerating the
solution
of a differential equation. It's a rather technical thing, and I don't
know
whether it makes sense to try to point it out here... it's like you can
have a
second-order solution, a fourth order, a sixth... you can have more and
more
accurate solutions, and you say “okay, I will make the most accurate
calculation I can do.” But the much better way is to do a few of those,
and
then to see whether you can see where it converges to. And if you can
figure
that out, then you have effectively done a million'th order thing which
you
could never do by hand -- you can get close to that.
It's called
Steven: yes... keep in
mind, there are many
levels of Wu Wei, and some are pretty close to ordinary notions of
action. And
others are more free and on a larger scale, and more spontaneous...
they have
less to do with the ordinary picture of an action and actor, who is the
locus
of the Way. And then there is an extremely high level that doesn't have
any
kind of locus, either in space or time, and is not to be judged in time
terms. When
we talk about a more free kind of action, we are still thinking about
time—effortless
action or nonaction action, or something. But the ultimate Wu Wei is
not a time
thing at all. Therefore it's not... it simply an actuality. And it's in
actuality that spans everything.
So the highest Wu Wei
is not an action at all,
because it is not a process and nothing is occurring in time. And all
the lower
levels of Wu Wei derive from that! In time. They get their juice from
that. So at
the highest level, there is no notion of building up toward a better
view ...
you know, sort of summing over approximations or anticipating where
something
is headed, etc.... because you're always just starting with the
already-accomplished,
basically. The ultimate Wu Wei is the "already accomplished". That
nature
is present in a way that amounts to being a trans-time thing, not an
accomplishment in time.
Piet: so how do you
start from that?
Steven: you don’t, as
an action! Everything is
always just that, really. That's the real point of Wu Wei. It's not a
question of how something in time
manages
to become or get at what is beyond time.
Piet: yes, so the
notion of starting is wrong.
Steven: Or becoming,
yes, or if it’s meant
to be an approach or
strategy! Nor is it necessary to hold onto the idea of someone
doing it,
either being able to do it or not being able to, either way. Wu Wei,
like many
features of higher contemplative insight, involves a totally different
view. The
radicalness of this is impossible for people to measure up to, no
matter how
hard they try, they will fall short of the real radicalness, because
they are
still thinking in local terms, unawake terms. Locality and un-awakeness
are
closely linked, though they don’t seem related.
Piet: yeah, it also
reminds me of inaccessible
transfinite numbers. But that's just a random association of course,
not one I
offer as a potentially useful parallel.
Steven: in a sense, the
most remarkable thing
about this is... and what makes this a WoK topic, rather than just a
meditation
topic which I would teach in a separate context, is that people don't
think
they have much capability... they think they themselves are quite
limited. And thankfully,
science in some ways denies that, because science—and through science,
we too—in
certain areas have achieved remarkable things, going far beyond our
apparent
limits. But in another sense science actually reinforces the same
limiting
picture, because it says “well, people are limited creatures,” which of
course
I accept in certain ways, “they're just this tissue, they have sense
organs and
a mind based on those, a limited brain, and that's what they are, and
you can
extend their capabilities using science, but you can't directly know
much,
regarding reality.” This is a claim which I both accept and reject,
depending
on the specifics.
Science is basically
saying that the best we can
do is just plug into this long multigenerational project and use the
methodology and instrumentation of science, and gradually learn a few
more
things, etc., but we can't know reality in any direct way. And in some
important sense, that turns out not to be true! It's both true and not
true,
depending on the domain and set of concerns which are at issue. In a
certain
sense, yes we are limited, there many limits to what we can do, and in
another
sense or with respect to another set of concerns or facet of our
reality, there
is no limitation.
Piet: here there's a
very interesting point. Thanks
for bringing that up. It is quite possible... that when we find a
natural way
in science to let an experiencing subject be treated on the same
elementary
footing as the experienced object, there might be some big surprises. I
mean,
Einstein tried to get rid of absolute space and time, and he had no way
to
guess that he would suddenly wind up with matter and energy being
interconvertible.
That was a complete surprise. Similarly, when he was making space-time
into an
active player, rather than just background scaffolding, he had no way
of
knowing that would finally explain the perihelion of Mercury, which had
been a
puzzle for half a century.
So it may be that what
you just said, and that is
what triggered me, could come out of the near-term science. For me, it
played
the role of the far term science, because I have no clue where it will
be, but
we may be surprised, and things may shift into each other more quickly
than I
had thought.
Steven: yes, we don't
want to set up a picture
that is too frozen regarding these notions of near-term and long-term
science.
Piet: I’m also
continuing to think about this notion
of Wu Wei beyond action or assumptions …
Steven: all I was
saying is that it is hard to
really relax ... even if we let go of the idea of action, we still
think in
terms of arriving... it's like we are using time in some sense to get
from an
incomplete state to a completed state that would normally be
implemented achieved
by an action. Even if we try to refine our approach, looking for some
better way
to do it, there is still this assumption of a time or state change. We
don't
understand the type of Wu Wei based on no-time. A strict Actuality
emphasis is
very different from what we usually comprehend. But despite it being
unfamiliar
to us, it’s still available, and in a remarkable way. Our scientific
and other
studies should not be taken as so definitive as to rule this out,
because that
would be an overextension of the true scope of their relevance or
application.
I’m sure we’ll come back to this issue many times in our talks … it
already
bears on the false “limits” issue and to Wu Wei.
{note to the reader:
earlier I didn’t
explain clearly enough that I
mean Wu Wei comes into the discussion of human beings’ “limits”
regarding
knowing
reality, because at its highest level, it points at a way of knowing
that is not undercut by
scientific
discoveries of limits to perception and other neurologically-based
findings. I understand that this claim sounds very implausible, and
admit that we will have to provide a lot more discussion to support it
and to narrow its intended application.
So we'll return to that in many of our later Dialogues.}
Piet: that reminds me
of another one of my
intuitions, which I have had for quite awhile, is to radicalize
phenomenology. I
mean, my approach is to radicalize whatever I see, and then see how far
I can
get.
Steven: your point is
that the near-term
revolution in science, centering on the “the experiencing subject and
interaction with its experienced object”, is related in certain ways to
a
radicalization of phenomenology?
Piet: yes, it might be.
Taking that line, what is
the "phenomenon"? Science talks about phenomena, and I accuse science
of amputating the phenomenon by trying to cut off the object pole from
the
subject pole... pretending that you can cut off one end of the stick
and
thereby reduce the complexity to just the one side, which never really
works of
course.
Steven: well, it works
well enough for certain
sorts of concerns.
Piet: yes, but you can
never fully and meaningfully
cut off one end of the stick and just have the "other side", you just
get another "second side". You can choose to ignore one side, and
then do something with the other, but...
Steven: yes, of course.
I realize we’re now
discussing two different points simultaneously … but just to continue
this
crisscrossing of ideas, my point was that just as Newtonian mechanics
is
perfectly adequate in nonrelativistic frameworks, so too I think you
can make
the cut you are talking about and still do geology and cell biology etc
without
any difficulty.
Piet: and what I mean
is that you never really
change the reality, which always continues to have both the subject and
object
sides.
Steven: sure. But for
answering certain kinds of
questions, which are perfectly legitimate scientific questions, you
just don't
need to include this extra facet “subject side” or type of information.
It
wouldn't buy you anything more with respect to those particular
questions.
So there are two
important issues here, and in a
way we are taking what might be expected to be each other's part: as a
teacher
of contemplation, I want to say that there is always the involvement of
a mind
to consider--it's never really absent. This is terribly important for
the
contemplative traditions’ main point. And yet right now I'm also
imagining that
for some scientific work, this may matter much more than people now
admit, but
for other sciences, it may not make much difference (even though it
still makes
a huge difference for a contemplative's assessment of such sciences in
some
ways). Meanwhile, you, even speaking as a scientist, are making the
point which
usually comes more from contemplative disciplines and phenomenology,
that this
other pole—the mind or subject part—cannot ever really be cut away as
contemporary science pretends. So we seem to be having a quirky
identity- or role-crossing
discussion now ...
Piet: Yes. But both
sides are part of a larger
view of science too. Coming back to my point, to do radical
phenomenology,
first of all the phenomenon... the phenomenology of physics is now
couched in
terms of the objects. Whereas a more complete phenomenology would be to
have
the subject interacting with the object. The next step could be the
arising of
phenomena independently of subject and object, what I in the past
called
"appearance", and then the next one still if you want, could even
drop the notion of "arising". In some advanced contemplative texts
I’ve read, this is basically the "there" part … some authors say
everything that arises is "nothing, yet there". So in the
"nothing, yet there", what is the "there" part?
Steven: "there"
basically just means “manifesting”
or “manifest”. This whole line of inquiry can really only be an IOU for
a discussion
of the differences between the agenda of scientific explanation, and
that of traditional
contemplative examinations of “phenomena”. This is an interesting and
complex
issue.
Piet: but just for now,
is there an
"ing" in the "manifesting"?
Steven: I’m going to
duck the question for now, and
just admit it’s interesting and complex, especially in the context of
those
traditional teachings. It would take awhile to discuss properly. It
becomes an even
more profound question when it's brought forward, as you’re asking, to
a modern
context informed by scientific perspectives and also modern views of
mind and
perception. This involves a context or world-view that the ancients
could not
have fully understood or imagined, but I think their view is still
completely
relevant. So the question is still ask-able, and important.
Piet: yes, and it
already applies even regarding
just this issue of radical phenomenology. So we’ll have to continue
with this
sometime.