I was thinking about the evolution of our awareness on these subjects from distinguishing spirituality from religion, to finding a scientific basis to these metaphysical understandings.
Although, certain people and cultures have made plenty of discoveries to these ends over the millenia, in our culture, our Western culture, I would say we've only made these critical transitions during our generation, since the early 60's.
Beginning with people like Alan Watts, who brought Eastern philosophies to Western audiences in the early 60's - encouraging an entirely new generation of adults to a way of thought that was otherwise outside of our Western experience. Prior to that introduction, Western philosophies were fairly tied exclusively into the Judeo-Christian religiosity of metaphysics. Watts opened our eyes to alternatives - both widespread and valid - outside of our own awareness. I think it was pretty ground-breaking, and it hit an audience being opened to further cultural shifts - namely music, free love and psycho-active drugs.
So the timeline now includes consciousness-expanding adepts a'la Timothy Leary; Aldous Huxley; the Beatles; the Grateful Dead; Carlos Castaneda; and a host of other cultural icons who brought their audiences to the brink of metaphysical discoveries.
After the drugs wore off, their affects lingering, I think the 80's and 90's brought New Age spirituality to the cultural forefront. All of a sudden, the God vs. the Devil conflicts of the prior age (culminating in critical mass in the 70's with all the films like The Exorcist; Omen; Race With The Devil; Legacy; etc.) were finally being rejected for the alternatives brought to the public like Ram Dass; the Tao Te Ching; and nearly ending in the late 90's with the predictions of such New Spiritual offerings as The Celestine Prophesy and others.
Only since the late 90's and early 2000's have we seen this melding of science and metaphysics in the current wave of offerings, per Deepak Chopra; Wayne Dyer; What The Bleep; etc.
We've counter-culturally evolved away from Deity driven philosophy to the current lineup of science-based metaphysics and spirituality - thanks especially to quantum theory.
Of course there are still plenty of fear-filled holdouts assailing us with their Deity-driven philosophies, but the New Age has evolved into something new - this Quantum-Metaphysical Age.
And finally we've got scientists discussing these areas left otherwise to the hippy holdouts. It's critical mass again, and refreshing.
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2 comments:
Nice timeline SK!
I'd extend the timeline for occidental religions going a little further down in history.
Looking at the occidental evolution of religions we can see that there was an evolution attenuating the presence of God(s) to the more rational explanations. For instance going from Polytheism to believing in a unique God. Also, there was a time in history in which religions were based on multiple (and often terrible) sacrifices to please their God(s). A great virtue that Christian-ism brought to the world was liberating people of sacrifices as Jesus Christ sacrificed one time for all of the believers. I consider that to be a great step in the evolution of religions on Occident.
Later on, the Church, which was a source of political control for people for quite some time, had a conflict of interest (talking about Inquisition Times and so forth) with science and basically the negotiation in the end was: Science can live as long as it will not try to explain the unexplainable. Science was condemned to the physical reality.
As you said in your post now Science doesn't have a choice as they're finding a lot of contradictions and phenomenons they can't find an explanation for and they need to go down the Rabbit Hole ;)
If I had to extrapolate for the future of metaphysical beliefs I'd say that we're progressively softening the image of God as we know more facts about our Universe and most of the metaphysical phenomena might start being scientifically explained and I guess at that point physics and metaphysics will become closer and closer.
In order to extend the timeline for orient I really don't have enough information. I'd like to believe as apparently they're coming from the opposite side of the dial they might find scientific explanations to their long hold metaphysical knowledge.
Oh yeah, you're absolutely right. The oriental traditions were all less attached to deities and more concentrated on their life lessons - Buddah, the teacher; The Tao as an observation of the way; and Confucianism as an order to it all...and those are 3000 years old.
I was merely speaking in terms of the way our occidental awareness has grown through those recent exposures to where we now have the science of mind meeting the metaphysical spirituality of soul. They're so close they can almost touch! But they never will 'cause it's only space!! :)
At least they won't fight any more - one rejecting the other or claiming superiority at the expense of the other. That's tired, and hopefully done.
That's been my premise since day one - but we had to go through all that new atheist material for those still grappling with outdated occidental dogmas. I think the quantum science and the metaphysical are having a near meeting of the minds, and that's all good.
It's all good....
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