[MD] contemplation

[MarshaV]

It is one thing to talk and write about 'pure' experience, and another to experience it.  


     "From the early seventeenth century onward, while scientists confined their research to the external world, the inner world of the human soul and consciousness was left to the theologians and philosophers.  Despite their many ingenious theories, they failed to come to a consensus on even the most rudimentary questions, and in the late nineteenth century scientists began to investigate the unexplored dimension of the natural world.  William James was fascinated by this topic, as it can be viewed from scientific, philosophical, and spiritual perspectives, and he rejected the notion that all physical and mental phenomena arise out of some primal stuff called "matter."  In his view, the primal substance of the universe is pure experience, which he characterized as "plain, unqualified actuality, or existence, a simple _that_," prior to the differentiation of subject and object."

     "James commented that psychology in his times was hardly more developed than physics had been before Galileo, and despite many advances in the cognitive sciences during the twentieth century, this is still true of scientific study of consciousness.  He added that a topic remains a problem of philosophy only until it has been understood by scientific means, at which point it is taken out of the hands of philosophers.  The fact that philosophers continue to make a living by writing book after book claiming to explain consciousness is evidence that the West does not yet have an authentic science of consciousness.  Scientists and philosophers continue to speculate on the real nature of the mind, as opposed to its appearances to introspection, by purely logical means, without any compelling empirical evidence.  Einstein commented, "Propositions arrived at purely by logical means are completely empty as regards reality.  Because Galileo saw this, and particularly because he drummed it into the scientific world, he is the father of modern physics---indeed of modern science altogether."

     "Philosophy, literally the "love of wisdom," is methodologically aimed at overcoming subjective biases and arriving at theoretical knowledge, which must be a central element of wisdom.  Historically, this is the whole point of philosophy.  But modern philosophers agree on virtually nothing, and they have produced no body of consensual knowledge, implying that their views must be strongly subject to subjective biases, which detracts from the cultivation of wisdom.  The primary reason for this failure is that philosophers have become overspecialized and disengaged from practical philosophy.  As ingenious as many of their speculations are, they are commonly of little use either in the world of science or in everyday life."  


      (Wallace, Alan B., 'Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity', p.77-78) 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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