Theory, Technology, Experience

Take two broad categories of human activity, religion and science. In the latter we divide the activity into the theoretical (as in theoretical physics, which largely runs on math) and the experiential (observation, as in astronomy, geology and experiments as in chemistry, particle colliders, etc.). There is also a kind of middle ground where knowledge is turned to use: technology.

I got to pondering on the applicability of this three-fold division to religion. Just let me use that word for the sake of simplicity—but permit me to include in it any and all relations to the transcendental. The answer here is that these divisions map neatly to the religious as well. The theoretical includes all formal thinking on the subject, thus theology—which, like theoretical thought in science, rests on philosophical foundations. Experience of the religious is very rare if we want to restrict the word, experience, to very direct and unambiguous encounters with the transcendental. Such experiences are much more prevalent than that, but separating the transcendental aspect from the merely psychic becomes problematical. Technology, of course, maps on the practice of religion—at one end bounded by moral codes, at the other on conscious practices of love, prayer, and meditation.

Let me briefly enlarge on the last points—religious experience, technology. It is very difficult to tease apart higher and lower forms of experience. Is an intuition due to unconscious observations or to a “message” from beyond? When do I practice love in a higher sense? When do I merely obey biological impulses? These tend to appear in syntheses. I call morality a technology in that it is something learned, with rules, be it merely etiquette or something beyond it, like conscious acts of self-restraint and love. It begins in conscious, willed acts and then, as habit, functions as technology.

The reason why we do not have a science of religion is explained entirely by the public inaccessibility of the experiential modality of it—which, of course, is the foundation not only of religious but also of material life. Religious experience is fundamentally subjective.

The mildest forms of transcending sorts of experiences—I put it weakly, like that, because anything we can even remotely explain as physical we immediately remove from that category—are somewhat accessible to public study, thus telekinesis, telepathy, viewing at a distance. What we view as strictly miraculous, like bi-location, may very well be energetic in nature—but the energies involved escape our measurements. But there has been, nevertheless, a certain amount of systematic study of these you might say lower forms of border-violation.

The most interestingly new experiential data that emerged in my life time are studies of near death experiences (NDEs). NDEs have always been there, no doubt, but modern science itself, through medicine, has caused these to be reported much more frequently. We’ve been able to resuscitate many more people. And some of those involved in this (doctors, nurses) are directly involved with the experiential rather than the theoretical aspects of biology. A very credible body of writings has thus emerged—the credible parts being initial studies not their endless exploitation as pop literature. This is something genuinely new. Depending on our ability to maintain a hi-tech civilization, it may continue to inform us and provide an almost public body of data to ponder. It is almost public because NDEs recur and are documented—and have certain strong commonalities. If hi-tech will once more fade away with the fossil sunset, in five hundred years or so the NDE nexus will have been lost again.

Very curious times we live in. We’ve got our hands around matter, theoretically, experimentally—for a while. The psychic is much more elusive. Which does not mean that either its theories or its technologies may be neglected; they must be pursued with dedicated vigor.