Science and Spiritual Practices

Reconnecting Through Direct Experience

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Science and Spiritual Practices

By: Rupert Sheldrake

Narrated by: Rupert Sheldrake

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About this listen

By the author of The Science Delusion, a detailed account of how science can authenticate spirituality.

In this pioneering audiobook, Rupert Sheldrake shows how science helps validate seven practices on which all religions are built and which are part of our common human heritage:

Meditation
Gratitude
Connecting with nature
Relating to plants
Rituals
Singing and chanting
Pilgrimage
Holy places

The effects of spiritual practices are now being investigated scientifically as never before, and many studies have shown that religious and spiritual practices generally make people happier and healthier. Rupert Sheldrake summarises the latest scientific research on what happens when we take part in these practices and suggests ways that listeners can explore these fields for themselves.

For those who are religious, Science and Spiritual Practices will illuminate the evolutionary origins of their own traditions and give a new appreciation of their power. For the nonreligious, this book will show how the core practices of spirituality are accessible to all, even if they do not subscribe to a religious belief system.

This is a book for anyone who suspects that in the drive towards radical secularism, something valuable has been left behind. Rupert Sheldrake believes that by opening ourselves to the spiritual dimension, we may find the strength to live more wholesome and fulfilling lives.

History & Philosophy

Philosophy

Physics

Religious Studies

Science

Spirituality

Meditation

Tradition

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Most relevant

I loved this book, and it resonates with my own thoughts and experiences, about the nature of reality.
Here is a short excerpt from the final chapter which I like, i hope it is ok to post this...
"for example materialists have not proved that matter is unconscious, or that nature is purposeless or that minds are confined to brains, these are assumptions. The materialist world view is a belief system not a statement of scientific facts. Another common reason for converting to atheism is the assumption that religions are primarily about propositions and beliefs rather than about experiences. Then religions can be dismissed as dogmatic, dependent on the authority of scriptures prophets and priests. By contrast so the argument goes, scientists are open to evidence, they ask clear questions, test them by experiment and establish a reliable consensus through repeated observations. I used to believe this myself, but I was disillusioned when I realised that some people had made science into a kind or religion and are often exceptionally dogmatic. They accept the scientific world view on faith, impressed by the authority and prestige of scientists and imagine that they have arrived at this world view by their own free thinking. I still believe in the ideal of open minded science but I see the religion of science, scientism, as a dogmatic ideology. In my own experience, believers in scientism are more dogmatic than most Christians I encounter. Most believers in scientism are not scientists, they are devotees rather than researchers, most have made no empirical observations, or scientific discoveries themselves, they have not worked at the large Hadron collider studying subatomic particles, nor have they sequenced genomes, or examined the ultra structure of nerve cells, nor done research in radio astronomy, nor penetrated the mathematics of super string theory. They take what they are told on trust, accepting the prevailing orthodoxy of institutional science as conveyed by textbooks and popularizers. They are incapable of questioning the authority of the scientific priesthood because they lack the necessary education and technical knowledge to do so, and, if they do raise awkward questions, they are likely to be ignored, or dismissed as ignorant, confused or stupid."

Rupert raises awkward questions and he does so within the scientific method. The phenomena he documents flatly contradict the materialist world view in a similar way, to the incompatibility between the two theoretical pillars of modern physics, quantum mechanics and general relativity.
General relativity and quantum mechanics are fundamentally different models that have different configurations. It is not simply a problem of scientific terms however, it's clash of genuinely incompatible explanations of reality.
So until we have a new model of physical reality which takes into account the findings of modern consciousness research, and which sees consciousness as primary and fundamental, and not secondary and contingent, we will remain stuck in this old paradigm. Rupert Sheldrake, along with Psychologist Stanislav Groff and others have demonstrated that consciousness simply could not be an epiphenomenon arising out if the complexity of the neurobiological processes in the brain, but is instead something primary and fundamental, and just as the Copenhagen interpretation suggests, it is matter instead, which is secondary and contingent.
After all, as Rupert explains in his subsequent book, subatomic particles are not made of hard enduring stuff like tiny billiard balls, but rather, are quantum of energetic vibrations in fields. A proton is a quantum of energetic vibration in a proton field, an electron, a quantum of energetic vibration in an electron field.
And only exist in a particular place at a particular time if and when consciously observed, while otherwise existing as energetic distributions of possibilities.

Sheldrake beautifully and effortlessly pulls the rug from under the feet of philosophical materialists such as Dawkins and Harris. A true openminded scientist, unhindered by scientific dogma.
Sheldrake is also a philosophy graduate, a student of theology, and an erudite of the worlds major religious traditions and practices, he appears pre-eminently qualified to discuss such question as, the inherent nature of spirituality in human consciousness and the spiritual dimensions of the many activities and practices that engage us and sustain our well being throughout our lives, and which are so indispensable to our health and happiness.
Sheldrake reveals the underlying truth, of the very spiritual nature of our species, and our deep need for connection with the universal eternal consciousness, which is the source of all else, and in doing so in this book, he really leaves those new militant atheists, sitting on their bottoms, the rug, well and truly whipped out from underneath them and their entire materialistic facade , what's left of it, clearly crumbling, collapsing around them.
To have faith in a belief system which has already superseded itself, mechanistic materialism, and which in principal can never account for some very real phenomena, is not smart.
Perhaps it is wiser and better to have faith in a belief system, which is supported by direct experience, which explains most everything, which resonates with our very nature, and which is after all, a metaphysical necessity.