The Rise Of A New Spirituality

In Beyond the Postmodern Mind, Huston Smith writes that “Rationalism and Newtonian science has lured us into dark woods, but a new metaphysics can rescue us”. Mankind will never give up its quest to find spiritual meaning and purpose in this world. This quest is what has been driving both science and religion for centuries.

The Buddha said, “The teacher appears when the student is ready.” The same principle applies to the human species as a collective. We have been exposed to new esoteric and scientific insights as we evolved – always when the time was right and the world was ready. Prominent religions all over the world were all founded on esoteric guidance and metaphysical wisdom delivered at various times throughout history by great teachers and prophetic messengers. But as time passed and these religions expanded, they were often contaminated by human bureaucracy, superstition, doctrine and dogma, which distorted the original teachings.

The realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, but there are strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies… science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind ~ Albert Einstein

Science developed out of this chaos, because dogmatic religion increasingly became unable to offer sensible explanations for the nature of reality and the Universe. In those early days the first scientists were in fact persecuted as “godless heretics” for questioning God and the church. Over the past century the pendulum swung back and the tables were turned, and we have been living in a world in recent times where scientific skepticism of all things esoteric or metaphysical has mostly been dominating the debate.

Both science and religion have however failed to produce all the answers we seek to the origins and meaning of our existence. Maybe the solution is to be found in religion and science coming together and combining its efforts? Albert Einstein said, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Hopefully the divide between the two will someday soon be bridged, once and for all.

Today, as we venture deeper into the 21st Century, the rising popularity of metaphysics,  alternative spirituality and the ‘new science’ seems to indicate that the world is indeed ready for a fresh approach to delving into esoteric wisdom, supported by a paradigm shift in scientific exploration. Sir Arthur Eddington writes, “Life would be stunted and narrow if we could feel no significance in the world around us beyond that which can be weighed and measured with the tools of the physicist or described by the metrical symbols of the mathematician.”

The time has come to reclaim our transcendental values – even if we are currently unable to prove many of them scientifically. Once we change our approach and begin to accept that there is more to our world than meets the eye, we will find new theories and new methods to find the scientific validations we have been looking for.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual.. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both ~ Carl Sagan

For example, should science begin to take seriously a metaphysical concept like ‘Universal Consciousness’, it might be able to ask all kinds of new questions about our reality and the Universe, and many new theories and concepts can grow from this new perspective. Science will never disappear or become obsolete. It will actually expand and grow, because it will have so many new frontiers and possibilities to explore, and new tools and words to do it with. Deepak Chopra writes in War of the Worldviews that “ordinary people aren’t going to give up emotions and inspiration just because science sniffs at subjectivity. Science shouldn’t be so edgy and defensive. Vandals aren’t going to smash their way into laboratories and throw Bibles at the equipment.”

People will keep searching and asking, because they will always wish to understand what it is that they are feeling and sensing, and more and more they will awaken spiritually. For it is inevitable that our intuition must at some point in our lives force us to admit that there may be more to our existence than what we see in the mirror.

Excerpt from: Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny by Anthon St Maarten © 2012