"Bad religion is self-righteous, arrogant, and intolerant. And so is bad science. But unlike religious fundamentalists, scientific fundamentalists do not realize that their opinions are based on faith. They think they know the truth."
- Rupert Sheldrake, Science Set Free
A dangerous philosophy of science is that science is better than philosophy.
"Teach thy tongue to say I don't know and thou shalt progress." - Maimonides
You gotta be able to be open minded enough to go meta on your point of view/ideology/belief system.
How about we all begin with saying
"I don't know what anything is."
Seriously!
I don't know what space, time, matter, energy, meditation, sound, beauty, happiness, spirituality, science, morality, light, math, other, reality, understanding, and I don't even know what knowledge is.
It's funny how we often get all emotional about being right.
If we're so convinced of the truth of our conceptual fortress, then why do we get so defensive, triggered, and criticize others?
Why even have intellectual arguments if we're already in possession of the truth?
Or, maybe deep down, we suspect that we're living in a conceptual fortress, and that if we're not defensive, then it will collapse.
The mind puts up fake fronts of knowing. This includes, beliefs, hearsay, intuition, theories, etc. All knowledge is twisted to fit the ego.
Do we care more about the truth or about being right?
Society created a religion of knowing through religion, science, business, politicians, school, etc. All of this creates the social matrix of pretending to know.
We humans rarely acknowledge the depth of our own ignorance.
Science only plays lip-service to not-knowing. Even the things science says that we know, we don't actually know.
Science overestimates what we really know by playing a game of false humility.
When we're talking about understanding all of reality/the pursuit of Truth, then we've got to be open to all possible worldviews and techniques of investigating the nature of reality.
Science is one point of view.
The scientific method is one method.
Society pressures us to make up crap when we don't really know. Not-knowing is treated as a weakness.
Not-knowing is treated as not even an option. But Not-knowing is often the best option.
Skeptics teach us that knowing is impossible. But we dismiss it. We don't care about the truth, but we care about what works and what is practical.
We build our knowledge without considering the cost. The cost of knowing is closed-mindedness, self-deception, assumptions, conflating map for territory, being lost in fantasy.
Not-knowing is connecting to truth, love, and being.
The ego hates uncertainty and would rather have false certainty than stand in I Don't Know.
The ego creates narratives to help it survive.
Newtonian mechanics is not fully how reality works and we know this, but we still use it because it is practical.
The mind has a natural need to know itself. Even children have a natural curiosity to understand the world.
Why do I have a natural desire to understand the universe?
The reason we have this desire is because God has a desire to know itself, and we are That.
God's motive is self-realization. Curiosity exists because we want to know ultimate reality.
Curiosity tethers us to God. When we follow curiosity long enough, we'll reach God/Truth.
Reality is too profound to be knowable. If reality can be knowable, then I am underestimating reality. Reality is too infinite for me to know it. You can awaken to the profundity of reality.
The counterintuitive move is to stand in I don't know. Bask in I don't know.
It takes wisdom and courage to admit I don't know.
The way to have the courage to admit my ignorance is to realize that it is better for me to admit I don't know or have been wrong once than to spend forever pretending that I do know or that I am right when I am not.
I only have to admit I am wrong once. Living and suppressing the truth that I was wrong is worse than just admitting I was wrong once.
Mostly we aren't thinking long-term, so we pretend to save ourselves embarrassment.
Ex. admitting Buddhism is wrong rather than spending my whole life defending it and thinking it is right.
Not-knowing gets me out of fantasy. Buddhism is a fantasy, science is a fantasy, society is a fantasy, etc.
Not-knowing is a powerful technique to combat self-deception, paradigm lock, closed-mindedness, etc.
Become honest about when I don't know a thing. This takes introspection.
Practice not-knowing. Stop parroting what I learn and sit with I don't know.
Distinguish theory of not-knowing vs. state of not-knowing.
Exercise: Not-Knowing Meditation
Close eyes and erase past and future.
Erase all that I think I know. If I still think I am in my house, then I am not in genuine Not-Knowing.
Knowing prevents insights and awakening. Not-knowing creates space for new insights and awakenings.
Do I really know or am I pretending to know?
Belief and hearsay isn't real knowing. Direct experience is king.
All knowledge is second-order.
All knowledge is about existence.
Existence is first-order. The raw sensations of the present moment is being. What I think or know about it is second-order.
My knowledge of the present moment is not about the being of it.
We're focused on the second-order of what we can use things for and forget the being of things and pretend like there never was a first-order.
Conceptual knowledge is a way of avoiding the mystery of being.
Being = consciousness.
If you stop caring about the first-order, you stop caring about reality because reality is first order.
For example, if scientists want to understand consciousness, they have to study it at the first-order because consciousness is at the first-order.
Our existence is prior to our knowledge of it.
To know something, we first have to exist.
I exist but I don't know what existence is.
Knowing infinity is not possible because knowing is second-order. Infinity cannot fully know itself because knowing is a subset of infinity.
A hand cannot grab itself.
Infinity cannot grasp or know itself.
Being is mystical and mysterious. Mystical = mysterious.
Mystical means it is so fundamental that it is too profound to be known, that is mystery.
Science can't find God because God is the totality of everything and the totality of everything cannot be grasped by a subset of that totality.
Reality cannot be explicated.
It's often assumed that it's impossible to know what reality is. It is only impossible when our mind is locked down with ideology.
When mind is open to mystical experiences, then it is possible.
When the mind realizes it knows less and less, mystical experiences open up.
**Practical Takeaways:**
Contemplate the limits of knowing, what is knowing, how is it possible, what do i know and not know?
Question all that is known.
Notice that I don't know the being of anything
Enter deep states of not-knowing many times.
Don't let others and society to pressure me into knowing. Build that backbone to say I don't know.
Bask in the mystery of not-knowing.
Contemplate: What do I know for sure?
Distinguish belief vs. direct experience.
Wipe my worldview clean.
Write down 10 things that I think I know but that I really don't.
Balance not-knowing with action. Be active in my life and practice not-knowing.
Operate from intuition and implicit understanding.
Enter into a deep state of not-knowing before I do meditate and contemplation and before I interact with others.
Become comfortable with not-knowing and uncertainty.
"Every scientific man, in order to preserve his reputation, has to say he dislikes metaphysics. What he means is he dislikes having his metaphysics criticized."
- Alfred North Whitehead
"The theoretical authority of science is much smaller than it is supposed to be."
- Paul Feyerabend
"So many people today - and even professional scientists - seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is - in my opinion - the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth."
.- Albert Einstein
"I want to know God's thoughts… the rest are details." -Albert Einstein
"It's structured to cover up a lie. The most dangerous lies are lies in the guise of truth. Where, all that you say factually is true, but it's part of a semantic field which is in itself a lie."
-Slavoj Zizek
"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them."
-George Orwell
"Systems, scientific and philosophic, come and go. Each method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay it is an obstructive nuisance."
"The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence."
"The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you."
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a mircale. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
"Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve."
- Max Plank
Namaste
If you're open-minded enough, watch this eyeopening three part series for more: