The Myth Of Objectivity As Only Reality

by Kalie Marino

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The Myth

Spiritual principles are quite different from traditional scientific or religious ones. Spiritual principles focus on subjective experiences, showing us how the subtlest levels of life cause major events to happen in the world. They explain the affects of our thinking, feelings, and being and show how our underlying attitudes influence the outcome of every aspect of our lives.

The area of spiritual discovery has only recently gained credibility in the scientific world. That was due to quantum physics and the advent of the new paradigm. Previously, spiritual experiences were thought to be mystical, magical, emotional or fantasy, but certainly not real. They were "just" subjective experiences, not objective reality.

Even many religious traditions place no value on discussing the subjective esperiences of God. I had a dear friend who was a nun and the director of a large hospital. Even though we came from very different religious backgrounds, we enjoyed getting together often to discuss our shared interest in spirituality. One day she said to me, "Kalie, I am a nun. My whole life is dedicated to God. The sisters and I talk about God all the time, but my conversations with you are the first time I have ever discussed how I experience God."

The modern scientific world has defined reality in terms of objectivity. This invalidates all truth that is experienced subjectively, giving only the physical senses the right to discern reality. This denies reality to everything we have treasured in our hearts; everything that has motivated us to overcome adversity, to care about others, to reach for the moon, to enjoy the beauty of nature, to love and to die for. It denies the reality of love and hate even though they drive us through life. It denies our deepest spiritual experiences of God.

We need to overcome this bias and stop viewing life through the lens of objective science. The rules of objectivity do not apply to all of life, but only to a narrow band of existence that we experience with our five senses.

Let's take a brief historical look at how reality was defined in the past. Before the industrial revolution, religious authorities defined reality. Civilizations were governed by and grew up within the total domination of some central god. This god was reflected in ttheir morality, politics, culture, art, and science. Everything was seen as a god or other metaphysical powers -- dreams, omens and signs, magic, myths, nature, heavens, healing, etc.

Religious authorities decided what was real. They interpreted all events and gave them all the meaning they had. Their interpretations of events were thought to be The Truth. People were not free to determine truth for themselves. To do so was heresy, a crime that was often punishable by death.

There was no freedom of thought or expression. Even in the democracy of Greece, the great philosopher, Socrates, was put to death for not recognizing the Greek gods. Reality was thought to be decreed by godly authority figures, not discovered by humans.

The mechanistic/scientific paradigm itself emerged out of the evolution of human consciousness as some people spontaneously began to experience individual freedom. They began defining and interpreting reality for themselves. The actual consciousness of freedom emerged before the revolution which gave it form. There were simultaneous revolutions taking place in religion, science and culture as some people demanded expression of their new found ability to think for themselves. Rebellion burst forth from every seam of civilization. They wanted the religious freedom to interpret scriptures for themselves, the intellectual freedom to examine and interpret nature objectively, and the political freedom to define cultural rules that were just for all people.

After having been at the mercy of the whims and moods of those in authority and burdened by religious oppression, people eagerly accepted objective definitions of reality from scientists, the new authority. They also began participating in defining objective rules and just laws for everything. This served two primary functions. First, participatory politics helped people know exactly what they could do to improve their life and have some measure of self-determination. This gave birth to the idea of equal rights and real democracy. Second, scientific proofs could prevent people from being victimized by unsubstantiated claims based on superstition, hysteria and imagination as they had been in the past. The witch-hunts were stark testimony to the abuse of religious power.

If we view civilization in developmental terms, we can see that three aspects of civilization-consciousness, culture and science-were in a fused state prior to the industrial revolution. All aspects were so tightly intertwined that independent thinking or growth in any one area was extremely difficult, if not impossible.

In the natural process of development, civilization had to begin to differentiate these three aspects, so each aspect could be discovered and develop on its own merits. As they began to differentiate there were great advances in our civilization, resulting in the industrial revolution and the developments of science and technology. Politics changed radically as people began to govern themselves and strive for equality and justice.

The next phase of natural development is to integrate these aspects with each other so that each area supports the development of the others and all three work together as an integrated whole. However this integration stage has not yet occurred, which has stunted our growth.

With the advent of modern science, the pendulum swung to objectivity as the only reality. Science worked with industry to solve the problems of civilization. Scientists were not only given the responsibility for solving our problems through technology, but they also began to define the problems too. While science itself can be a powerful evolutionary force, it grew like a cancer and took over, defining reality in all fields of life, just as religion had done in the past. Science became the new religion, in which objective reality was defined as the only reality. If something couldn't be measured and predicted, it wasn't considered real.

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