This meant that, having
proposed a theory to explain some natural phenomenon, then
one should try one's best to disprove it! One should test
the theory with challenging experiments. One must put it on
trial with rigorous argument.
When a flaw appears in the theory, only then does science
advance. A new discovery has been made enabling the theory
to be adjusted and refined. This fundamental and original
methodology of science understood that it is impossible to
prove anything with absolute certainty. One can only disprove
with absolute certainty.
For example, how can one prove the basic law of gravity that
"what goes up comes down, eventually"? One may throw
objects up one million times and see them fall one million
times. But that still does not prove "what goes up comes
down".
For NASA might then 'throw' a Saturn rocket up into space
to explore Mars, and that never comes down to earth again.
One negative instance is enough to disprove the theory with
absolute certainty.
Some misguided scientists maintain the theory that there
is no rebirth, that this stream of consciousness is incapable
of returning to a successive human existence. All one needs
to disprove this theory, according to science, is to find
one instance of rebirth, just one!
Professor Ian Stevenson, as some of you would know, has already
demonstrated many instances of rebirth. The theory of no rebirth
has been disproved. Rebirth is now a scientific fact!
Modern science gives a low priority to any efforts to disprove
its pet theories. There is too much vested interest in power,
prestige and research grants. A courageous commitment to truth
takes too many scientists out of their comfort zone.
Scientists are, for the most part, brainwashed by their education
and their in-group conferences to see the world in a very
narrow, microscopic, way. The very worst scientists are those
who behave like eccentric evangelists, claiming that they
alone have the whole truth, and then demanding the right to
impose their views on everyone else.
Ordinary people know so little about science that they can
hardly even understand the jargon.
Yet, if they read in a newspaper or magazine "a scientist
says that?", then they automatically take it to be true.
Compare this to our reaction when we read in the same journal
"a politician says that?"! Why do scientists have
such unchallenged credibility?
Perhaps it is because the language and ritual of science
has become so far removed from the common people, that scientists
have become today's revered and mystical priesthood.
Dressed in their ceremonial white lab coats, chanting incomprehensible
mumbo jumbo about multi-dimensional fractal parallel universes,
and performing magical rituals that transubstantiate metal
and plastic into TVs and computers, these modern day alchemists
are so awesome we'll believe anything they say. Elitist science,
as once was the Pope, is now infallible.
Some know better. Much of what I learnt 30 years ago has
now been proved wrong. There are, fortunately, many scientists
with integrity and humility who affirm that science is, at
best, a work still in progress.
They know that science can only suggest a truth, but can
never claim a truth. I was once told by a Buddhist G.P. that,
on his first day at a medical school in Sydney, the famous
Professor, head of the Medical School, began his welcoming
address by stating "Half of what we are going to teach
you in the next few years is wrong. Our problem is that we
do not know which half it is!" Those were the words of
a real scientist.
Some evangelical scientists would do well to reflect on the
(amended) old saying "Scientists rush in where angels
fear to tread" and stop pontificating about the nature
of the mind, happiness and even Nirvana. Neurologists are
especially prone to such neuroses (Neurosis: an undue adherence
to unrealistic ideas of things).
They are claiming that the mind, awareness and will, is now
adequately explained by activity in the brain. This theory
was disproved over 20 years ago by Prof. Lorber's discovery
of the student at Sheffield University with an IQ of 126,
a First Class degree in mathematics, but with virtually no
brain (Science, Vol. 210, 12 Dec 1980)!
More recently, it was disproved by Prof. Pim Van Lommel,
who demonstrated the existence of consciousness activity after
clinical death, i.e. when all brain activity has ceased (Lancet,
Vol. 358, 15 December 2001, p 2039).
Although there may be correlation between a measurable activity
in part of the brain and a mental impression, such co-occurrence
doesn't always imply that one is the cause of the other. For
instance, some years ago, research showed a clear correlation
between cigarette smoking and the non-occurrence of Alzheimer's
disease.
It was not that smoking cigarettes somehow caused immunity
from Alzheimer's, as much as the tobacco companies might have
wished, it was only that many smokers did not live long enough
to get Alzheimer's disease!
Thus a co-incidence of two phenomena, even when repeated,
does not mean that one phenomenon is the cause of the other.
To claim that activity in the brain causes awareness, or mind,
is plainly unscientific.
Buddhism is more scientific than modern science. Like science,
Buddhism is based on verifiable cause-and-effect relationships.
But unlike science, Buddhism challenges with thoroughness
every belief.
The famous Kalama Sutta of Buddhism states that one cannot
believe fully in "what one is taught, tradition, hearsay,
scripture, logic, inference, appearance, agreement with established
opinion, the seeming competence of a teacher, or even in one's
own teacher".
How many scientists are as rigorous in their thinking as
this? Buddhism challenges everything, including logic.
It is worth noting that Quantum Theory appeared quite illogical,
even to such great scientists as Einstein, when it was first
proposed. It is yet to be disproved. Logic is only as reliable
as the assumptions on which it is based. Buddhism trusts only
clear and objective experience.
Clear experience occurs when one's measuring instruments,
one's senses, are bright and undisturbed. In Buddhism, this
happens when the hindrances of sloth-and-torpor and restlessness-and-remorse
are both overcome. Objective experience is that which is free
from all bias.
In Buddhism, the three types of bias are desire, ill will
and sceptical doubt. Desire makes one see only what one wants
to see, it bends the truth to fit one's preferences. Ill will
makes one blind to whatever is disturbing or disconcerting
to one's views and it distorts the truth by denial.
Sceptical doubt stubbornly refuses to accept those truths,
like rebirth, that are plainly valid but which fall outside
of one's comforting worldview.
In summary, clear and objective experience only happens when
the Buddhist 'Five Hindrances' have been overcome. Only then
can one trust the data arriving through one's senses.
Because scientists are not free of these five hindrances,
they are rarely clear and objective. It is common, for example,
for scientists to ignore annoying data, which do not fit their
cherished theories, or else confine such evidence to oblivion
by filing it away as an 'anomaly'.
Even most Buddhists aren't clear and objective. One has to
have recent experience of Jhana to effectively put aside these
five hindrances (according to the Nalakapana Sutta , Majjhima
No. 68). So only accomplished meditators can claim to be real
scientists, that is, clear and objective.
Science claims to rely not only on clear and objective observation,
but also on measurement. But what is measurement in science?
To measure something, according to the pure science of Quantum
Theory, is to collapse the Schroedinger Wave Equation through
an act of observation.
Moreover, the "un-collapsed" form of the Schroedinger
Wave Equation, that is before any measurement is made, is,
perhaps, science's most perfect description of the world.
That description is weird! Reality, according to pure science,
does not consist of well-ordered matter with precise massed,
energies and positions in space, all just waiting to be measured.
Reality is the broadest of smudges of all possibilities, only
some being more probable than others.
Even basic 'measurable' qualities as 'alive' or 'dead' have
been demonstrated by science to be invalid sometimes. In the
notorious 'Schroedinger's Cat' thought experiment, Prof. Schroedinger's
cat was ingeniously placed in a real situation where it was
neither dead nor alive, where such measurements became meaningless.
Reality, according to Quantum Theory, is beyond measurements.
Measuring disturbs reality, it never describes it perfectly.
It was Heisenberg's famous 'Uncertainty Principle' that showed
the inevitable error between the real Quantum world and the
measured world of pseudo-science.
Anyway, how can anyone measure the measurer, the mind? At
a recent seminar on Science and Religion, at which I was a
speaker, a Catholic in the audience bravely announced that
whenever she looks through a telescope at the stars, she feels
uncomfortable because her religion is threatened.
I commented that whenever a scientist looks the other way
round through a telescope, to observe the one who is watching,
then they feel uncomfortable because their science is threatened
by what is doing the seeing! So what is doing the seeing,
what is this mind that eludes modern science?
A Grade-One teacher once asked her class "What is the
biggest thing in the world?" One little girl answered
"My daddy". A little boy said "An elephant",
since he'd recently been to the zoo. Another girl suggested
"A mountain".
The six-year-old daughter of a close friend of mine replied,
"My eye is the biggest thing in the world"! The
class stopped. Even the teacher didn't understand her answer.
So the little philosopher explained "Well, my eye can
see her daddy, an elephant, and a mountain too. It can also
see so much else. If all of that can fit into my eye, then
my eye must be the biggest thing in the world." Brilliant!
However, she was not quite right. The mind can see everything
that one's eye can see, and it can also imagine so much more.
It can also hear, smell, taste and touch, as well as think.
In fact, everything that can be known can fit into the mind.
Therefore, the mind must be the biggest thing in the world.
Science's mistake is obvious now. The mind is not in the brain,
nor in the body. The brain, the body and the rest of the world,
are in the mind!
Mind is the sixth sense in Buddhism, it is that which encompasses
the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch,
and transcends them with its own domain. It corresponds loosely
to Aristotle's "common sense" that is distinct from
the five senses.
Indeed, ancient Greek philosophy, from where science is said
to have its origins, taught six senses just like Buddhism.
Somewhere along the historical journey of European thinking,
they lost their mind! Or, as Aristotle would put it, they
somehow discarded their "common sense"! And thus
we got science. We got materialism without any heart. One
can accurately say that Buddhism is science that has kept
its heart, and which hasn't lost its mind!
Thus Buddhism is not a belief system. It is a science founded
on objective observation, i.e. meditation, ever careful not
to disturb the reality through imposing artificial measurements,
and it is evidently repeatable.
People have been re-creating the experimental conditions,
known as establishing the factors of the Noble Eightfold Path,
for over twenty-six centuries now, much longer than science.
And those renowned Professors of Meditation, the male and
female Arahants, have all arrived at the same conclusion as
the Buddha.
They verified the timeless Law of Dhamma, otherwise known
as Buddhism. So Buddhism is the only real science, and I'm
happy to say that I'm still a scientist at heart, only a much
better scientist than I ever could have been at Cambridge.
Courtesy: Buddhist Society of Western Australia.
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