Science

The term ‘science’ comes from a Latin root scire meaning ‘to know’, which derives from another root scindere ‘to split’. If we wish to gain knowledge of something we might split it or cut it away from something else in order to examine it in isolation or to examine one of its components separate from others. We see the root again in the word scissors from –cidere ‘to cut’, or later in words like schism & schist from a root meaning ‘to split, tear, rent’. Obviously, often when we split or cut something we are able to see parts.

From the Mind & Meditation viewpoint, where we are dealing with internal processes & aiming at wholeness, we have to split components apart and then put them back together. In the psychological sense putting the Mind and its components back together after a split as in schizophrenia where thoughts, feelings, actions and motivations are separated out, reintegration is significantly more difficult. Much of modern mental illness and malfunction comes from our deep scientific motive. In the gaining of knowledge we split, and then we have to integrate. It is the process of ‘integration’ which is one of the principal purposes of Meditation.

To be more succinct [oh!, there are some of those ‘sci’ letters again], we can gird up our definition in relation to Meditation and say:-
“Science is the analytical and synthesising process whereby we become con­scious of the separate elements of reality (motion-patterns) and of their relations with each other in the infinite continuum of motion-power.”

Scientific research in the field of Meditation is not only difficult and precariously unreliable, as we have discovered in the past several decades, but as quantum science has discovered, the focus of consciousness upon an experiment has a catalytic change effect upon the experiment’s results. How strange but true.

In summary we may say that so-called ‘scientific research’ into Meditation requires the individual to do the Meditation experiment and to examine in consciousness what happens in the mind as the experiment is taking place. Then because of ‘catalytic consciousness’ the experiment will never give replicable results. Next time we do the Meditation exercise will not be the same as the previous. Some of our deeper thinking scientists know this and are not surprised that research results are constantly changing and are very rarely replicated in Meditation trials. Of course this is known to the experienced Meditation practitioner, and in fact is often the spur to continue practice because of this very changeability from an ‘interest’ viewpoint. Even at the most subtle levels, “variety is the spice of life.” So really, rather than giving up Meditation after falsely trying to suppress the Mind’s annoyances – so-called, we strive more intently to discover more subtle and refined aspects of the Mind, all the way down to the No-Mind, the Mind that doesn’t think.