Can Meditation and Science Work in Harmony?
If you’ve been following the science news lately, you will have read that scientists have found God “unnecessary,” declared that “philosophy is dead,” and think they can explain consciousness by taking cross-sections of the brains of worms. For those of us steeped in the contemplative tradition of inner discovery through meditation, this extreme materialism amounts to a full-frontal assault on everything we hold dear. Does this mean we should turn our backs on science, or is there a way for meditation and science to come together in the exploration of consciousness? The Stark Logic of Extreme Materialism Perhaps the world’s most preeminent scientist, Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University, has just released yet another ambitious treatise aimed at the popular audience, The Grand Design, in conjunction with Leonard Mlodinow of Caltech. The book posits M-Theory, which is actually an amalgamation of several theories, as the long-sought unifying concept between Einstein’s general relativit
