VGF Articles
On the Wider Application of the IIP-VGF Framework
Bringing Science and Spirit Together Without Collapsing Registers
If you want to bring science and spirit together, then the first thing to understand from the science side is that conscious, phenomenological experience, of any kind, spiritual or otherwise, is not science. The only thing that science can do is describe structure in that phenomenology, where structure is present in it.
From the spirit side, the first thing to understand is that tens of thousands of years of human expression on the descent of spirit into matter, just because it is tens of thousands of years of it, is not the same thing as the reliable embodiment of knowledge of the relation between spirit and matter. Before the advent of modern science the only way that we humans had of understanding our constitution and situation in the universe in which we find ourselves, was psycho-mythpoeic. And even to this day, psych-mythopoeic thinking and conceptualising goes on. In many people it actually dominates.
That's hardly surprising because pure scientific understanding expresses itself in a way that is desiccated of pure phenomenological connection with the world. It understands everything it understands, structurally. And human beings were not born to be merely structural understanders of themselves and their situation. But the fact of the matter is that even scientists understanding purely structurally are often experiencing phenomenological pleasure and joy from their understanding. That's the nature of human beings. Not that they are necessarily fully consciously aware of it, as fully consciously as it is possible to be. But it is a scientific fact that the parts of the brain that are especially active in artistic, aesthetic experience, may also be especially active in mathematical contemplation.
Without scientific understanding human beings understand their experiences either prosaically without really understanding anything very deeply at all, in the same way that many other mammals do, or human understanding is essentially psycho-mythopoeic. And then you end up with gods and angels and all kinds of psychic phenomena that is in general taken to be part of an external reality with its own psychic version of objective existence. Without ever understanding at all that this is all part of the nature of the mind.
The kingpin in the cognitive machine that keeps this belief in the separateness of all this from who we are, or as something separate from us with which we have a relationship, is the idea of "who I am". This idea of "who I am" is not something that can only be approached through a mysterious, mystical, or metaphysical explanation labelled "ahamkara" - the Sanskrit word in Hinduism and Buddhism referring to ego - or some other label taken from early psycho-mythopoeic understanding. Rather, it is the fingerprint of symbolic intelligence that evolved somewhere between approximately 100,000 years ago and 50,000 years ago. Whilst atomically modern humans emerged on the evolutionary scene perhaps 300,000 years ago.
So if we are still stuck in mythopoeic understanding and conceptualisation then the first thing we need to understand about the truth of the relation between science and spirit, is that they are not intrinsically separated or antagonistic towards each other. And really, that needs to be understood by all scientists, too. And the next thing to understand is that despite all the psycho-mythopeic reporting of the descent of spirit into matter, there is no descent of spirit into matter. It's not that there is no spirit. It's not that there is only matter and everything reduces to matter. Human beings all over the world will testify from their own phenomenology that there is spirit. But it's not something you can describe with science. That incompatibility does not mean that one or the other, science or spirit, must therefore be fictional. Science itself has its own dichotomies in which two things can be true, and yet they are incompatible with each other. The theory of relativity and quantum theory is a prime example. What the incompatibility means is that the registers have to be kept separate. Or, if we are talking about physics, one has to understand the root source behind both incompatible things, in scientific terms.
So spirit cannot be "explained" by science, and science cannot be put into spiritual terms. Despite that there are numerous contemporary instances where the attempt to do this is happening, in so-called "spiritual teachings" or "new understanding", with very beguiling but illusory results. All this is the attempt to collapse one register of human expression and understanding into another.
Sometimes register collapse even has a place in the world. Nobody today wants to regard certain kinds of serious mental illness as possession by evil spirits. So we collapse that register of understanding into science. But that does not mean that the phenomenological experience has gone away.
However, collapsing the registers of science and spirit, where by "spirit" we are talking about genuine spirituality and perhaps theology, is a mistake. Because, in the scientific register, brain activity is not one and the same thing as conscious phenomenology. Which is why brain science speaks of "neural correlates" and not of brain activity as being consciousness itself. And in the spiritual register, despite all the psycho-mythopoeic reporting, spirit never did descend into matter. If human beings are going to talk about spirit, which we do, then spirit is in matter. But the idea that it descended into it is psycho-mythopoeic. It first requires the evolution of the brain.
Science is the supreme understanding of matter or material phenomena for human beings. It is not religion or enlightenment that has that privilege. Science is the supreme discipline of symbolic intelligence, for human beings. And as for spirit, spirit is not something to be understood in symbolic intelligence. But that does not make it beyond conscious or phenomenological experience, for human beings.
The fact facing us is that you cannot collapse "consciousness", as actual, conscious experience of being, into scientific "explanation". But you can use science to describe structures of conscious phenomenology. Because science is very good at describing structures, and some phenomenology is structured. This is what brain science does, and what the IIP-VGF framework does also. And actually, standard modern psychology already does this, too.
More traditional psychology that is now no longer considered scientific, such as the depth psychology of Jung, talks about psyche. Psyche hasn't gone away, just because modern psychology takes a different approach. Modern psychology can still talk about psyche, but just not in terms of psyche. As soon as we do that, we are starting to become psycho-mythopoeic. Like Jung. Which is why Jung is no longer considered scientific, in the mainstream, according to the standards and approach of modern science.
In these times, these times of developing brain science, the understanding of quantum decoherence, and improving understanding of palaeontology, the psychic itself needs to be understood in the scientific context, and not just continually talked about through psycho-mythopoeic language. Psycho-mythopoeic understanding and expression was what humans used before the advent of modern scientific understanding. It's the only kind of understanding they had available. And that does not make it have more fidelity to the truth of our origins, constitution, and situation, as human beings.
The idea of the descent of spirit into matter involves the psyche. But in the spiritual register, in the 21st century, where we have modern scientific fact available, there is no descent of spirit into matter, and no psyche prior to matter. That does not mean that everything can be reduced to matter or scientific explanation, or that matter is all there is. It does not mean that there is no spirit, or no psyche. It means that if you want science to meet spirit then you have to accept that in the scientific register the fact is that the psyche evolved. And even our capacity as human beings for spiritual experience that you might want to distinguish from the psychic, evolved.
This, too, does not mean that there is a successful scientific theory for the evolution of consciousness, that reduces consciousness to scientific explanation. No such theory exists. Notwithstanding all the theories that purport be this. One simply does not have to have a scientific "explanation" of consciousness or conscious phenomenology in order to be able to show that conscious phenomenology evolved. Psyche - as conscious phenomenology - is structured, and science is very good at describing structure. And when you put the various disciplines within science together, it is clear that psyche evolved.
So Jungian archetypes, for example, are not mysterious, metaphysical features arising from the descent of spirit into matter. Rather, they evolved together with the evolution of the species, human beings, and the human brain. And for all that Zen may declare that everything is now, and for all that this may be accepted as phenomenologically correct, and a true and proper statement about consciousness or pure awareness, evolution in time still remains a stable fact about our existence. And if you don't understand why the facts are the way they are, why the enormous mountain of evidence of evolution, from multiple different disciplines, is the way it is, then there is clearly something lacking in your understanding, no matter how enlightened it may seem to be.
The future for we human beings isn't about understanding how spirit descended into matter, scientifically. Because it didn't. Nor is the future of understanding for human beings about rejecting science, in favour of the pursuit of Zen presence. The future is in bringing spirit and science together without collapsing registers.
From the spirit side, the first thing to understand is that tens of thousands of years of human expression on the descent of spirit into matter, just because it is tens of thousands of years of it, is not the same thing as the reliable embodiment of knowledge of the relation between spirit and matter. Before the advent of modern science the only way that we humans had of understanding our constitution and situation in the universe in which we find ourselves, was psycho-mythpoeic. And even to this day, psych-mythopoeic thinking and conceptualising goes on. In many people it actually dominates.
That's hardly surprising because pure scientific understanding expresses itself in a way that is desiccated of pure phenomenological connection with the world. It understands everything it understands, structurally. And human beings were not born to be merely structural understanders of themselves and their situation. But the fact of the matter is that even scientists understanding purely structurally are often experiencing phenomenological pleasure and joy from their understanding. That's the nature of human beings. Not that they are necessarily fully consciously aware of it, as fully consciously as it is possible to be. But it is a scientific fact that the parts of the brain that are especially active in artistic, aesthetic experience, may also be especially active in mathematical contemplation.
Without scientific understanding human beings understand their experiences either prosaically without really understanding anything very deeply at all, in the same way that many other mammals do, or human understanding is essentially psycho-mythopoeic. And then you end up with gods and angels and all kinds of psychic phenomena that is in general taken to be part of an external reality with its own psychic version of objective existence. Without ever understanding at all that this is all part of the nature of the mind.
The kingpin in the cognitive machine that keeps this belief in the separateness of all this from who we are, or as something separate from us with which we have a relationship, is the idea of "who I am". This idea of "who I am" is not something that can only be approached through a mysterious, mystical, or metaphysical explanation labelled "ahamkara" - the Sanskrit word in Hinduism and Buddhism referring to ego - or some other label taken from early psycho-mythopoeic understanding. Rather, it is the fingerprint of symbolic intelligence that evolved somewhere between approximately 100,000 years ago and 50,000 years ago. Whilst atomically modern humans emerged on the evolutionary scene perhaps 300,000 years ago.
So if we are still stuck in mythopoeic understanding and conceptualisation then the first thing we need to understand about the truth of the relation between science and spirit, is that they are not intrinsically separated or antagonistic towards each other. And really, that needs to be understood by all scientists, too. And the next thing to understand is that despite all the psycho-mythopeic reporting of the descent of spirit into matter, there is no descent of spirit into matter. It's not that there is no spirit. It's not that there is only matter and everything reduces to matter. Human beings all over the world will testify from their own phenomenology that there is spirit. But it's not something you can describe with science. That incompatibility does not mean that one or the other, science or spirit, must therefore be fictional. Science itself has its own dichotomies in which two things can be true, and yet they are incompatible with each other. The theory of relativity and quantum theory is a prime example. What the incompatibility means is that the registers have to be kept separate. Or, if we are talking about physics, one has to understand the root source behind both incompatible things, in scientific terms.
So spirit cannot be "explained" by science, and science cannot be put into spiritual terms. Despite that there are numerous contemporary instances where the attempt to do this is happening, in so-called "spiritual teachings" or "new understanding", with very beguiling but illusory results. All this is the attempt to collapse one register of human expression and understanding into another.
Sometimes register collapse even has a place in the world. Nobody today wants to regard certain kinds of serious mental illness as possession by evil spirits. So we collapse that register of understanding into science. But that does not mean that the phenomenological experience has gone away.
However, collapsing the registers of science and spirit, where by "spirit" we are talking about genuine spirituality and perhaps theology, is a mistake. Because, in the scientific register, brain activity is not one and the same thing as conscious phenomenology. Which is why brain science speaks of "neural correlates" and not of brain activity as being consciousness itself. And in the spiritual register, despite all the psycho-mythopoeic reporting, spirit never did descend into matter. If human beings are going to talk about spirit, which we do, then spirit is in matter. But the idea that it descended into it is psycho-mythopoeic. It first requires the evolution of the brain.
Science is the supreme understanding of matter or material phenomena for human beings. It is not religion or enlightenment that has that privilege. Science is the supreme discipline of symbolic intelligence, for human beings. And as for spirit, spirit is not something to be understood in symbolic intelligence. But that does not make it beyond conscious or phenomenological experience, for human beings.
The fact facing us is that you cannot collapse "consciousness", as actual, conscious experience of being, into scientific "explanation". But you can use science to describe structures of conscious phenomenology. Because science is very good at describing structures, and some phenomenology is structured. This is what brain science does, and what the IIP-VGF framework does also. And actually, standard modern psychology already does this, too.
More traditional psychology that is now no longer considered scientific, such as the depth psychology of Jung, talks about psyche. Psyche hasn't gone away, just because modern psychology takes a different approach. Modern psychology can still talk about psyche, but just not in terms of psyche. As soon as we do that, we are starting to become psycho-mythopoeic. Like Jung. Which is why Jung is no longer considered scientific, in the mainstream, according to the standards and approach of modern science.
In these times, these times of developing brain science, the understanding of quantum decoherence, and improving understanding of palaeontology, the psychic itself needs to be understood in the scientific context, and not just continually talked about through psycho-mythopoeic language. Psycho-mythopoeic understanding and expression was what humans used before the advent of modern scientific understanding. It's the only kind of understanding they had available. And that does not make it have more fidelity to the truth of our origins, constitution, and situation, as human beings.
The idea of the descent of spirit into matter involves the psyche. But in the spiritual register, in the 21st century, where we have modern scientific fact available, there is no descent of spirit into matter, and no psyche prior to matter. That does not mean that everything can be reduced to matter or scientific explanation, or that matter is all there is. It does not mean that there is no spirit, or no psyche. It means that if you want science to meet spirit then you have to accept that in the scientific register the fact is that the psyche evolved. And even our capacity as human beings for spiritual experience that you might want to distinguish from the psychic, evolved.
This, too, does not mean that there is a successful scientific theory for the evolution of consciousness, that reduces consciousness to scientific explanation. No such theory exists. Notwithstanding all the theories that purport be this. One simply does not have to have a scientific "explanation" of consciousness or conscious phenomenology in order to be able to show that conscious phenomenology evolved. Psyche - as conscious phenomenology - is structured, and science is very good at describing structure. And when you put the various disciplines within science together, it is clear that psyche evolved.
So Jungian archetypes, for example, are not mysterious, metaphysical features arising from the descent of spirit into matter. Rather, they evolved together with the evolution of the species, human beings, and the human brain. And for all that Zen may declare that everything is now, and for all that this may be accepted as phenomenologically correct, and a true and proper statement about consciousness or pure awareness, evolution in time still remains a stable fact about our existence. And if you don't understand why the facts are the way they are, why the enormous mountain of evidence of evolution, from multiple different disciplines, is the way it is, then there is clearly something lacking in your understanding, no matter how enlightened it may seem to be.
The future for we human beings isn't about understanding how spirit descended into matter, scientifically. Because it didn't. Nor is the future of understanding for human beings about rejecting science, in favour of the pursuit of Zen presence. The future is in bringing spirit and science together without collapsing registers.