Science and spirituality

The choice between science and spirituality appears increasingly artificial today, even from a scientific perspective.” writes Larry Dossey M.D.¹

It does seem difficult for thought entrenched in the material to consider something quite different. But all that is needed really is a change in thought.

Dossey says, “Modern medical science has become synonymous with the material, evidenced by our near-total reliance on drugs, surgery, radiation, and so on.“²

This perspective expects all healing to work according to physical laws and thus struggles to accept the possibility of spiritual healing. If it isn’t material, doesn’t work materially, and can’t be measured materially, then how can it be healing? But what if there are spiritual laws that underlie spiritual healing? Does that change the perspective?

It seems that some hint, at least, of acceptance of the possibility of thought-based healing has been around a long time. Dossey shares a discovery that surprised him, and it surprised me too: “we find in the two thousand-year-old Hippocratic Writings the observation that ‘there is a measure of conscious thought throughout the body’.“³

Dossey points out that a shift in perspective from “brain-body” (local) healing to “mind-body” (nonlocal) healing is the transition going on in medicine today.

And if healing actually proceeds from a nonlocal – hence omnipresent and thus unitary – mind, would it be such a stretch to consider the possibility of a single, infinite, divine intelligence, or divine Mind (God) as the source of healing?

I think more and more we’ll all find that science and spirituality needn’t be viewed as mutually exclusive. It’s certainly something worth discussing, don’t you think?

¹ Healing Words – The Power of Prayer and The Practice of Medicine, p. xx  ² ibid p. 201  ³ ibid p. 37
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