Introduction: Bridging Science and Spirituality

No actual skeptic, so far as I know, has claimed to disbelieve in an objective world. Skepticism is not a denial of belief, but rather a denial of rational grounds for belief.

-- William Pepperell Montague

Despite a fair number of skirmishes, science and spirituality managed to co-exist comfortably for thousands of years. At times, the two were indistinguishable. But during the 20^th century, the long-simmering tension finally erupted into all-out war.

A complicated web of factors lit the fuse. Western religion had become institutionalized, or perhaps fossilized, while science experienced its most dynamic period of change in history. A dramatic break resulted, and the camps of science and spirituality became polarized.

In real life, the overwhelming majority of people fall somewhere between the two poles. But the extremes dominate public expression, from the pulpits and the podiums, in scientific journals and self-help books. The most vocal defenders of spirituality insist faith must be the basis of belief. The most authoritative proponents of science insist tangible facts must support belief.

This multifaceted problem encompasses a bewildering variety of belief systems. The issue is perhaps too big for any one book, but we can slice the conflict between fact and faith into smaller pieces.

One such fragment involves an ancient belief which has recently become a New Age phenomenon – the chakra system.

The chakras are seven points on the human body which some spiritual traditions believe to be important. But ask any two people familiar with the term why the chakras are important, and you might very well receive two different answers.

Ask any five people familiar with the term exactly what they mean by “chakras,” and four and a half of those explanations will fall somewhere between incomprehensible and demonstrably wrong. Most people define a chakra as a “spiritual energy center” in the body, which is also the dictionary definition.ⁱ

Chakras are located in specific places, yet the language used to describe their properties is often imprecise or simply incorrect. As a result, the chakras have become a lightning rod for skeptics.

According to The Skeptic's Dictionaryⁱⁱ, “The alleged energy of the chakras is not scientifically measurable (...) and is at best a metaphysical chimera and at worst an anatomical falsehood.” This description is pretty typical of the scientific viewpoint on chakras, both in tone and informational content.

As we'll see in the chapters to come, several scientific studies have attempted to verify the existence of chakras or similar phenomena, but no clear correlation has been discovered between energy (in the physics sense) and the chakra locations. Nor has any study found a consistent anatomical feature associated with the chakras.

But that isn't the end of the road.

Chakras were first described in the Hindu Vedas thousands of years ago. Today, they have been integrated into several versions of Buddhism and various New Age beliefs. They also sometimes appear in otherwise secular yoga practice.

Science has never found a chakra, perhaps because spiritual people rarely define a chakra correctly. The popular definition of a chakra today is a far cry from its original meaning. Although researchers have investigated the chakras, their experiments are based on a modern definition – the popular notion of a “spinning wheel of energy” – rather than the best-developed of the original underlying concepts, which holds that chakras are centers of consciousness in the body.

For a scientist, the word “energy” means something very specific, a physical phenomenon with clearly identifiable properties. Consciousness and energy are different, and science has only recently begun developing sophisticated theories that address those differences.

This book aims to bridge the chasm between ancient formulation and modern theory.

In order to put some limits on this discussion, let's define science as the creation and testing of useful models that reflect an objective reality, and spirituality as an exploration of the meaningful essence of subjective experience. For the sake of staying focused, we won't get into the broad questions usually categorized under spirituality, such as the existence of God or the superiority of any given moral framework.

We'll begin this journey with the idea of the chakras, then trace the history and evolution of this spiritual concept, and the language used to describe it. We'll survey the scientific research that extends from this history and language.

Then we'll get back to basics and define the chakras very precisely. Armed with this definition, we'll see how chakras might fit into modern scientific understanding, and we'll propose some methods for testing that fit – both scientifically and spiritually. It's important to examine both ends of the spectrum. Otherwise, you're only getting half the story.

Regardless of whether you believe in chakras, and whether you're convinced by the ideas in the pages that follow, the journey offers its own reward, introducing a perspective sometimes lacking in our collective conversation.

Since the dawn of the 20^th century, science has expanded in startling and important new directions. Chaos theory, quantum mechanics, genetics, cosmology, emergence, consciousness studies... All these disciplines have moved science forward, but they also hearken back to concepts and principles from the earliest days of recorded history.

The i-Ching's 64 hexagrams correspond to the 64 informational sequences encoded into human DNA.ⁱⁱⁱ The significance of this correspondence is subjective, but its existence is not. Spiral structures are embedded in the universe of physics, but they are also omnipresent in spiritual art and sacred geometry.^iv Chaos theory provides a scientific framework for how everything is interconnected, a recurring theme in Eastern spiritual systems. The Eternal Tao is now considered relevant to everything from physics to corporate management... even Winnie the Pooh.^v

You can vigorously debate the importance of these correspondences. You can endlessly argue about how specific principles play out in the real world, or how they don't. But regardless of your world view, these parallel structures are important because they demonstrate that both sides of the divide are concerned with the same mysteries.

So if science and spirituality ask the same questions, why don't they find the same answers? The problem has to do with language.

Too often, people frame spiritual answers in imprecise aphorisms or fence them in with institutionalized taboos that are not the result of considered examination (e.g., an insistence on literal truth of the creation story in Genesis).

Before the age of Einstein and Planck, scientific answers tended toward the other extreme. Isaac Newton defined physics for 300 years as a system for measuring gross quantities and forces on a physical plane. Newton's physics produced answers that were often too rigid and material, rejecting the reality of that which can not be straightforwardly measured or dissected.

Under a strictly Newtonian world view, chakras were indeed absurd. So too the soul, acupuncture, healing touch, resurrection of the dead, reincarnation, magic and prayer. (Newton himself was deeply religious nevertheless.)

The age of Newton is over. Today we live in a world governed by quantum mechanics and chaos theory. The language of discovery and the scientific definition of reality have expanded dramatically.

Certainly all spiritual beliefs are not created equal. Some concepts clearly don't have a basis in scientific fact. But it's beginning to look like some do.

Many skeptics haven't caught up with the times and still indiscriminately heap scorn on any idea that smacks of unseen forces. Many spiritual seekers are equally parochial about the impenetrability of mysteries to which they claim special access.

Seekers must respond in equal measure to the new science – by improving the clarity of their language and their logic, and by stripping away absolutism based on articles of blind faith. It's easy to hide behind amorphous language, and it's far too easy to evade scrutiny by characterizing important concepts as inherently undefinable.

Whether skeptics or seekers, we are only limited by our own biases. The history of the chakra system epitomizes many important aspects of the historical division between science and spirituality.

Not everyone who reads this book will be convinced by the end that chakras are real, but I hope most will agree there can be a “rational grounds for belief.” In the end, there is only one mortal sin, and it's the same in both science and spirituality – refusing to even consider the possibility that one might be wrong.