Reconnecting to Nature

Health and Healing

Socially Engaged Spirituality

1.The Emerging, Holistic Worldview
Historical Worldviews	The Emerging Worldview	Attempts at Manifestation	Science and Spirituality

“Science without spirituality has ill-served the Earth, and spirituality without science has degenerated into dogmatic exclusivity" - Satish Kumar, editor, Resurgence Magazine

Science and Spiritualiy

During the Newtonian/Cartesian worldview, science and religion have drifted apart in the West, and are commonly seen today by the majority of people as two separate ways of understanding the world, with little or no overlap. However, as the new worldview emerges, we will see a different, more holistic way of looking at science and religion, consistent with the concept of everything being connected. Actually, prior to the Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm of the 17th century, science as we know it —characterized by the scientific method of experimentation, replication and verification— did not exist. In fact the word “scientist” first appeared in the 19th century. Prior to the modern age, the term natural philosophy would have covered the activities of those examining and classifying the many features of nature. In those days, there was no debate on the subject of separation of science and religion.

The drifting apart is to a great extent due to the focus of the scientific method on measurement. In an extreme interpretation, some scientists might say: "if it can’t be measured, it does not exist", at least not for them. A major factor determining which problems to tackle in science has thus been the ability to make quantitative measurements.

To follow the debate, we must first distinguish between religion and spirituality. Religion is about belief systems, while spirituality is a about personal experience. Religion is hierarchically organized with appointed “middle men” such as priests, while spirituality is about direct experience by the individual of the divine. Religion is about belonging to a group having a common dogma, while spirituality is about one’s actual behavior in the physical world.

While the work of David Bohm is perhaps the most important theoretical work to date on the possible interactions between spirit (implicate order) and the physical world (explicate order), a few others are working at the theoretical level, such as Ken Wilber (Integral Theory) and Don Beck (Spiral Dynamics), and some at the experimental level, (HearthMath Institute, Holotropic Breathing) trying to establish measurable and verifiable interactions.

Jiddu Krishnamurti - David Bohm recognized in Krishnamurti's teachings parallels with his own revolutionary theories of physics.
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Resurgence magazine, founded by Satish Kumar, is committed to raising awareness of the key ecological and spiritual issues of our time.