 At the heart of Western culture lies a foundation in the scientific method. It is the premise that an objective reality exists, and that the secrets of which can be ascertained through replicable and shareable experiments through the testing of informed hypotheses. Yet, even with our modern science grounded in practicality in the material universe, some of the greatest scientists, philosophers, poets, and minds of antiquity, and even many modern-day ones, have acknowledged something particularly interesting in their approach to understanding reality as a whole. It would appear as though the influence of spiritual or esoteric materials unnotable scientists ranges from direct translations of the Emerald Tablet by Newton to philosophies on religion and science from figures that seem to agree with the important hermetic principles, including names like Leonardo da Vinci, Francis Bacon, Paracelsus, William Blake, Carl Jung, and even Einstein and Hawking. Many of these legendary figures acknowledge the dead of gratitude to the corpus hermetica, a spiritual philosophy on the nature of God and being, which stretches all the way back to the dynastic period of Egypt. To these people, the hermetica provided a foundational philosophy in their respective approaches to understanding the universe. So, why do science and spirituality always seem to be at odds? Well, let's talk about it. I know what you might be thinking. We're setting ourselves up for a ton of debates in the comments. But here's the thing. Science and spirituality are not all that different. I know we've been making these videos for years now, spurring support and debunkery across the board. But it dawned on us recently. Hey, why don't we make a spirit science episode about science? Truly, in the scientific paradigm we live in today, countless spiritual philosophies have influenced the scientific method since its very creation as a disciplinary field. And on the other end of it, many modern-day scientific discoveries in the fields of psychology, quantum physics, and even magnetics, for example, are actually confirming things that mystics have been saying for generations. Take meditation. For years it was thought as some foreign mystical eastern practice. But in recent years, studies have shown benefits against an array of conditions both physical and mental, including irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, anxiety, depression, and even PTSD. Dr. Gal de Borde's research at the Martino Center for Biomedical Imaging has consistently shown changes in brain activity and subjects who have learned to meditate, hold steady, even when they're not meditating. And that sense of well-being and peace stays with practitioners up to six months after an initial session. The debate of how much spiritual and philosophical disciplines affect our reality is also a key point of debate in quantum physics. This clip of Dr. Eben Alexander beautifully illustrates this debate, culminating with his central argument that what drove the founding fathers of quantum physics into the arms of mysticism was a belief that on a subatomic level, the conscious mind, that which we call the soul, played a role in the unfolding of what we observe in our reality. With all of these new advancements and discoveries, it's hard to believe that there is still so much animosity between the fields of faith and science. In large part, I think that it might draw from the fact that science is based on the freedom to question reality, whereas religion historically is based on the duty to believe in a particular doctrine, system, or ideology. However, it's important that we make the distinction that religion and spirituality are fundamentally different things. While the open curiosity of science is arguably a natural enemy of dogmatic religion, it is undoubtedly an ally of early Gnostic spirituality. Gnosticism, meaning having knowledge in Greek, arose from early Christian, pagan, and Jewish principles, and features an emphasis on personal spiritual development over more orthodox and systemized tradition. In fact, modern science arguably has its very roots in early Gnosticism and the mystery schools that came before. Both Galileo and Copernicus saw themselves as simply reviving the ancient Pythagorean tradition. Later, even Isaac Newton had a strong interest in alchemy and saw his study on ancient philosophy and mythology as more important than his scientific work. To that extent, he actually claimed in some of his manuscripts to have discovered the underlying Gnostic truth of all religions. This phenomenon and link between science and spirituality isn't some relic of the Renaissance, however. With Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of quantum physics being passionate and vocal about his interest in Gnostic Christianity and its impact on his work. And Werner Heisenberg, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics and arguably the father of quantum mechanics in 1932, even asserted that modern science was simply confirming ancient Pythagorean beliefs to an inconceivable degree. And now, you've heard of Einstein, right? Famous science guy, wacky hair, good sense of humor, the legend in science responsible for the all-pervading theory of relativity? Right, that guy. Well, even his response to the question of how he viewed the nature of the universe and God could be mistaken for the words of an ancient sage if the names were changed around. He said, How can the cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it. Now, to briefly explore the subject of scientific realism, many modern scientists embrace the idea of Einsteinian realism, that is, the belief that absolutely everything which exists in our cosmos, everything that we can ever know about is simply the emergent outcome of the operation of certain unknown nonlinear partial differential equations over a finite space-time reality. What's amazing is that even this is simply a modern rendition that was debated in ancient India over a thousand years ago, that was ultimately based on the Upanishads, ancient spiritual texts which were originally tenants of Sanskrit philosophy. Alternatively, Heisenberg reminded us that theories of physics are really just part of our efforts to predict the stream of experience ever more completely and ever more precisely. While the growing inaccessibility of science is an ever-increasing issue in our society, with journals and papers being hidden behind paywalls and layers of academic jargon akin to the allegorical passages of the Dao De Ching in their closely guarded comprehension among elite academics, it seems as if modern science is most argued to be literal in its approach. To an extent, science is equated with a kind of materialism, an approach that seeks to reduce everything to physics, because matter is all that exists. Ironically though, many of the great scientists of history did not follow this line of thought. If anything, this supposed literal bedrock is where everything begins to fall apart. As prophesied in the Hermetica, Hermes' vision of a world where science dismisses spiritual philosophy as careless superstition is undoubtedly here. However, we'd like to offer a different view. Perhaps our modern science is a legacy with Gnostic values at its heart. Both science and Gnosticism are based on questioning what is taken for granted, with both refusing to accept anything on blind faith. Both regard conceptual images of the world as working models that can ever be changing and evolving with new discoveries. Much like scholars of Alexandria and the ancient Gnostic brotherhoods, modern scientists are internationalists who embrace each other's discoveries and work, regardless of nationality, faith, or political ideology. The very honorary title of PhD, which breaks down to Doctorate of Philosophy, is defined as you having contributed something new to the wider corpus of human knowledge and understanding, and it is awarded under this criteria. In fact, Gnostic and scientists actually mean the exact same thing, knower or seeker. While complementary and sharing the same goal of understanding the mysteries of existence, the two fields of spiritual mysticism and science do diverge on their approach. While science aims to obtain an objective knowledge of the cosmos, spirituality is concerned with subjective self-knowledge. Where science is concerned with tangible appearances and replicability, spirituality is concerned with the ineffable essence of things, and where science is about solving the mysteries of the infinite, spirituality is about dissolving into them. In a maxim, science is attempting to understand something so complex that it cannot be comprehended. Spiritual mysticism, such as Gnosticism, is attempting to understand something so simple that it cannot be understood. Despite the constant attempt to distance themselves from each other, it would appear that science and spiritual philosophy are in fact two sides of the same coin, two halves of a single whole concept. Now, if you've watched this whole video so far and you're still not convinced, I invite you to consider the following. Today, we all know the very prevalent modern theory of the Big Bang. But did you know that this was inspired by a spiritual philosophy of all things emerging from the one? The Big Bang theory, no, not the TV show, thank you, Sheldon, was first publicized by the works of Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest. The theory, accepted by nearly all astronomers today, was a radical departure from scientific orthodoxy in the 1930s, as it proposed an ever-changing, mutable model of the universe. Similarly to how the Hermetica tells us that the mind of God is constantly creating in its thoughts, as opposed to the static model that was mainstream. In fact, the idea that every observable galaxy had originated from a single point seemed preposterous at the time. Lemaitre attacked the problem of cosmology from a thoroughly physical point of view, and realized that his solution predicted the expansion of galaxies that observations were only then beginning to suggest. Appealing to the new quantum theory of matter, Lemaitre argued that the physical universe was initially a single particle, the primeval atom, as he called it, which disintegrated in an explosion giving rise to space and time, and the expansion of the universe that continues to this day. This idea marked the birth of what we now know as Big Bang Cosmology. Now it is tempting to think that Lemaitre's deeply held religious beliefs might have led him to the notion of a beginning of time. After all, the Judeo-Christian tradition had propagated a similar idea for millennia. Yet, Lemaitre clearly insisted that there was neither a connection nor a conflict between his religion and his science. Rather, he kept them entirely separate, treating them as different, parallel interpretations of the world, both of which he believed with personal conviction, stating that, As far as I can see, such a theory remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental being. For the believer, it removes any attempt at familiarity with God. It is consistent with Isaiah speaking of the hidden God, hidden even in the beginning of the universe. With that, I think there is a certain poetic irony with ending the episode back at the beginning of all things. And so with this, I kindly invite you to come and join us in deeper exploration of the mysteries of the cosmos within Spirit Mysteries, our new platform for evolving consciousness and dissolving into the infinite. Thank you so very much, and we'll see you on the other side.