This a science, mental health, and spirituality blog. It says so right in the site’s header, so it must be true. Yet before now I’ve never explicitly linked the three.

Science is an analytic system that describes the world on the basis of observation, theory, and experiment. Spirituality is also based on observing, theorizing, and testing. In the former case we use physical instruments to query the external, material world; in the latter we use meditation to explore the interior space of mind.

Science would claim that mind is purely explainable on the basis of matter; religion would disagree. But for the moment let’s accept the claim that mind is a product of matter, with the proviso that we consider the shadowy quantum realm in the equation. With that step, matter contains enough ‘magic’ to account for the experiences of mystics and saints. (This is a controversial point that I’ve addressed in this earlier post, among many others.)

With this as our basis, we now recognize two legitimate modes for investigating mental life. Science looks at mind from the outside, whereas meditation looks from within. Each method has advantages and disadvantages. Although the book I mentioned last time (A Universe of Consciousness, by Edelman and Tononi), dismisses the introspective approach at the outset, this seems to me shortsighted. Fortunately, many other experts understand the value of combining interior exploration with exterior experimentation. The Dalai Lama regularly convenes gatherings of meditators and open-minded neuroscientists in order to dovetail the vast knowledge banks possessed by the two camps.

Last time I attributed the saltatory nature of personal growth to competing neural circuits. This shows how the scientific method can help us negotiate freedom from mental distress. But numerous other essays have drawn on my personal explorations of inner space through meditation. Mental health really does connect with both science and spirituality.

Why do I bother to write a whole post about this rather obvious fact? Because we are witnessing a revolution in mental health care that owes its genesis to the merging of the two realms. The best psychotherapists now stress the importance of spirituality, while the faithful increasingly turn to science to better understand human distress.

Our culture did not invent psychiatric turmoil; since the dawn of humanity people have endured pain and sorrow. And since all distress is experienced in the mind (even physical pain is mediated by the brain), all suffering can be considered a form of mental illness. The Buddha grappled with this dilemma twenty-five centuries ago, and Hindu sages worked on it even earlier. These traditions explain the workings of the mind in great detail, and also suggest how we can restructure mental processes to reduce psychic discomfort. Significantly, modern neuroscience shows layering within brain processes that is consistent with Eastern views, providing evidence that the two methods truly do investigate the same phenomena from different sides.

Combining interior knowledge with scientific understanding promises potent solutions for the pains of life. By merging science and spirituality, the mental health world is on the verge of decisively answering many psychiatric problems. My hope is that the historical antagonism between materialist and spiritualist views will not delay this welcome trend.

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