Can spirituality be empirical?

Posted by Olly Robinson on 18 August 2009 | 2 Comments

Tags: Spirituality

I was chatting with someone the other day who asked about the Scientific and Medical Network. I mentioned that we, as an organisation, are open to both science and spirituality as pathways to truth. He responded by saying that that must be a hard line to walk, as religion is about faith, which is inherently (to use his word) "non-empirical".

I think he's right - traditionally, religion has not been about anything that resembles experience or that is direct and incontrovertible in the way that empirical data is. Religion has traditionally been about faith, blind faith even.

However, one of the reasons that I think its a good idea to separate out the word spirituality from the word religion is that the former is, in my view, much more about direct experience and the undertaking of practices that bring about such experiences, while the latter is about conformity, dogma and belief.

The experience that is provided in spiritual practice or in transcendent moments is VERY hard to describe, some would say ineffable. It could be experienced during music, dance, meditation, prayer, intensive exercise, an embrace with a lover. They provide a knowledge of a personal connection with something infinite and out of time, and therefore there is no real need for religious structures or priests to act as intermediaries.

The kind of experience that occurs during spiritual practice is not really measurable in any sense, or quantifiable, or even public at all. And any description of them, or inferences made from them, must be filtered through the cognitive capabilities of the person in question, and so may be interpreted quite variously. This makes spiritual empiricism very different to the empiricism of the sciences.

I recall that Buddhism refers to six senses: the five that we refer to + the mind. For them, mind is not confined in the body, therefore it is a kind of sense. They see it as a source of information from beyond, just like smell, sound, sight, taste and touch are. So the empiricism of spirituality is perhaps an empiricism of the mind, while science is empiricism of the senses.

We all have faith - I deny anyone to find a belief system, secular or religious, that has no faith in something - some conviction in the face of uncertainty and doubt. The key is to base any faith on ongoing experiences from the mind, heart and body, and to keep any beliefs open to possible change. With these provisos, the place where science and spirituality meet is a harmonious one.

Dr Olly Robinson