nicoll again...
"The task of the future is to reconcile the older and newer stand-
points. That is why the Work says that one of its aims is to unite "the
"Wisdom of the East with the Science of the West." Unless science
discovers what is called religion and unless religion discovers what is
called science the mind of Man will be split into two irreconcilable sides
and indeed we might think that the whole world to-day suffers from
Schizophrenia.
Now if your cosmological system (if you have one) is based on the
idea that there were somehow or other a lot of atoms derived somehow or
other from somewhere or other, which condensed to form billions and
billions of worlds and galaxies, and that somehow or other life started
and somehow or other made different animals, trees, fishes, birds, men,
women, gradually, little by little, then your mind is not properly
furnished with the requisite ideas and understanding for you to reach
the higher parts of centres, and finally higher centres themselves, which
compose the very complex organism of Man. You will be looking
down like cattle and will be incapable of looking up. You will see the
explanation of the most wonderful things like consciousness, thought,
feeling, sensation and so on in the little small instruments that render
them possible. You will be boiling up the artist's picture and analyzing
its chemistry. Then what happens is that you will be more and more
under the domination of matter, seeing in matter the explanation of
everything. The result will be that internally you will be more and more
under the influence of machines, of external organisations coming
from outside. But if you begin to think that there is not a single thing
that you can study in any branch of science that is not a miracle, if
you realize that the properties of matter cannot be solely explained in
terms of matter, then something inside you will turn the other way
round and begin to look at the source of meaning.
You remember the definition that Plato gave of the difference
between a man glued to the senses and a man of understanding? He
said: "The first believes that matter created mind, whereas the second
believes that mind created matter." Which do you yourself think is
prior in scale? Do you think that mind and consciousness arose
accidentally out of some chance combination of atoms whose origin
you cannot explain, or do you think that mind created matter and all
its possibilities and that you live in an intelligent and ordered Universe?
It is on these two questions that the whole future of humanity at present
depends. If you say there is nothing, then well and good. If you say
there is something, then, well, and much better. I have never any quarrel
with science itself. Science is obvious. The Mother of Europe (i.e.
Greece) laid down all the formulations of science long before Christ.
Then came the Christian teaching in this short 2,000-year era of ours,
in this experiment upon Man created as a self-developing organism.
It seems that the idea was to unite the two aspects of truth, outer and
inner, and this idea has no doubt failed, although in the beginning
Pythagoras taught both religion and science together and in those
times no one thought there was any contradiction between scientific
facts and the gods. Every centre has two sides, one turned towards the
external senses and the literal meaning of everything, and the other side
turned towards higher centres which represent higher levels in the Ray
of Creation. Balanced Man must learn to use both sides and to under-
stand them and bring them into relationship so that there is no contra-
diction, and if he excludes one in favour of the other he is undeveloped.
NOTE
I repeat that it is not science that is wrong. The facts of science are
perfectly correct, although fluctuating. It is the interpretations of
science that are wrong.
"
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Hi mr bopp,
your post inspired me to search for articles with the keywords "kepler
religion" because Kepler represents, in my opinion, a world view
where science and religion are closely connected.
To my surprise I found a fairly comprehensive overview on Kepler.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kepler/
Sections 2 and 7 cover aspects of science and religion.
Regarding the NOTE in your Nicoll excerpt, I disagree.
He says, that the facts of science are perfectly correct
and only the interpretations are wrong.
In the case of the speed of light science "solved" the problem
of meandering measurement values by dictating a fixed number.
And Dayton Miller's ether drift experiments
http://www.orgonelab.org/miller.htm
that indicate a variant speed of light have been kept
away from scientists and the public for 90 years.
sequoia
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