by Alan McAllister, CCHt PhD-phys
Meditate on a sunrise or a sunset. As simple and regular a daily fact as any on this spinning globe we all inhabit. One might consider this an excellent example of that core of modern scientific thought, the repeatability of experience. That one person, under similar conditions, will observe the same occurrence as another, is the property of repeatability that is essential to defining what is scientifically real.
There is power and usefulness in this concept, as evidenced all around us in the fruits of modern technology. Like any tool, however, of the hand or of the mind it may be carried to extremes, outside the bounds of its right or useful application. To maintain that only that which is repeatable is real, is over reaching and making the servant into the master; blinding our senses to the very experiences that are the foundation of observation and our understanding of what is real. Likewise, to maintain that the result or observation obtained under tight scientific control is the only answer, in fact to posit that there is always only one “right answer”, is a misconception that causes a great deal of subtle and not so subtle mischief in the world.
Return again to your sunset or sunrise. In fact there are only two days out of the year that this experience may be had everywhere on Earth, those being the equinoxes. All other days one pole or the other, and varying expanses around those poles, goes without; being in perpetual day or night, and until the seasons shift again. Thus we begin the circumscribing of a result with the conditions under which it holds true, or the controlling of the experiment, in which lies the greater part of the art of a good experimental scientist.
The day of the year, as the location on the globe, is a reasonable scientific variable. Considering it more closely, the Sun rises and sets not only at different times, but in different places, relative to a given vantage point, throughout the year. Only on the equinoxes does it set truly in the west, having risen truly in the east. On all the other days, where it crosses the horizon at all, it does so either to the north or the south of due east and due west.
One of the most important, but often ignored pillars of science is that every idea, concept, or fact has its limitations, conditions or circumstances outside of which it no longer holds, or only partially, or with modifications. In this sense nothing is absolutely real, or perhaps absolutely unreal, in spite of what scientists may maintain.
Once more your sunrise and the sunset, notice the infinite variations due to weather and atmospheric conditions, which while undoubtedly due to very scientific causes, are unique to the point of irreproducibility, in practice if not in theory.
Now, add in the qualities of your human experience of your sunrise or sunset. The emotional and aesthetic aspects of watching not a simple event, summarized in a single word, but the unfolding in time of an artistic masterpiece of light, air, and vapor with the landscape of the intersection of the sun with the horizon of the earth, will always be unique.
Human experience is always unique, and generally irreproducible, but certainly no less real than the sunset or sunrise that gives rise to it. Just as the natural conditions are never exactly the same, you are never exactly the same. Each human experience is the meeting of an infinitely complex and variable aspect of the universe, yourself, with the rest of that infinitely complex and variable universe. This does not make it unreal, even though it may be hard to quantify and reduce to simple variables.
Even if you somehow control all the natural, scientific, variables to be the same, it is impossible that you are exactly the same. Not even the same as yourself at another time, let alone the same as any other human being even at the same time. This uniqueness is true in the sensory processing of your brain, even before it comes into your conscious awareness, where your past and present emotional and mental being receives it, and the uniqueness of the experience compounds.
There is therefore an inherent tension between our human experience of the world and the ideal of scientific repeatability. This is not to say that idea/concept/ideal is not useful, or even beautiful, but that it is not absolute. There is as much reality to your subjective experience of the sunrise and there is to the fact that the sun will cross the eastern horizon tomorrow morning. Your human ability to mold a single, whole, experience of that sunset is both mysterious and very real.
It is both useful and interesting to explore the sameness in experiences, even to extend that to feelings and intuitions as the yogis have done for millenia. It is likewise important to realize that the wholeness of any experience will always be unique, and that if you do something differently, or come up with a different answer, or are a different sort of person, that is your experience, and it has its own level of reality.
It is generally useful to come into agreement and find common ground with others, but it is not the sole definition of reality. All great scientific advances have come out of someone’s different answer to an old question, or a new answer to a different question. We waste so much time chasing the “Right Answer” according to any number of outside sources (as we are taught to do this in most schools). Rather, know that you know your own answers and ask what they are. You may find them in a book, or talking to a teacher, but they may also come in your dreams, or by asking a different question, and you may find them in your heart while watching a particularly beautiful sunset.
Your experience is your reality.. even if its not repeatable.. and many of the best experiences are not repeatable.. be grateful and open to more.
(© 5/13)
