What Happens When Science Studies Spiritual Experience?

In the last two writings, I have spoken about something that has been part of my own life for many years: the relationship between spirituality, personal experience, questioning and research.

First, I asked whether someone can coach another person and still talk about spirits. Then I explained why I no longer publicly provide lists of researchers, books and names for people to follow, and why I believe research does not begin and end with a Google search.

There is another part of this conversation that I find particularly interesting.

What happens when science studies an experience that the person experiencing it understands as spiritual?

The first thing that often changes is the language.

If I tell you that I sensed the presence of a spirit, I am describing my experience using the language through which I understand it. If someone studying human behaviour, consciousness, the brain or the experience of bereavement wants to investigate what happened to me, that person cannot necessarily begin their research by establishing that what I experienced was a spirit.

They have to investigate the experience.

What did I see?

What did I hear?

What did I feel?

Was I awake or asleep?

What happened to my body?

How long did the experience last?

Had I experienced anything similar before?

Did anybody else report something at the same time?

What happened before and afterwards?

Those questions do not necessarily confirm my spiritual interpretation, but they do not automatically take it away from me either. They create a way of examining an experience that is otherwise extremely difficult to measure.

This is where terminology becomes important.

The person having the experience may use words such as spirit, soul, intuition, presence, communication, energy or something completely different according to their own spiritual or religious understanding. A professional investigating the experience may need different terminology because they are asking a different question.

That does not necessarily mean that one person is right and the other is wrong. They may simply be approaching the same experience from different positions.

This becomes even more interesting when different areas of science become involved. The human experience does not conveniently divide itself according to university departments. Our thoughts, emotions, memories, senses, bodies and environments interact with one another. Therefore, something that one person experiences spiritually may raise questions about psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry, consciousness, sleep, memory, perception, physiology or several of those areas at the same time.

And this is where I believe we need to become comfortable with something that human beings sometimes find extremely uncomfortable:

We don't always know.

Science can investigate certain parts of an experience without necessarily being able to answer the ultimate question behind it.

If someone reports seeing or sensing a deceased relative, for example, many things could potentially be investigated about that experience. What science can investigate depends on the circumstances, the research question and what can actually be observed or measured.

The much larger question: was that genuinely the consciousness or spirit of the deceased person? Is considerably more difficult.

That distinction matters.

Sometimes people believe that because science can explain one component of an experience, the entire spiritual interpretation has therefore been disproved. Other people make the opposite mistake and believe that because science cannot completely explain an experience, the spiritual explanation must therefore have been proved.

I don't think either position helps us very much.

Not knowing is not the same as proving that something does not exist. Equally, not having an alternative explanation is not proof that our preferred explanation must be correct.

My personal position remains spiritual. I believe in spirits. I believe that the physical body is not the entirety of who we are. I have had experiences throughout my life that I understand within that framework, and I am not going to pretend otherwise simply because I am discussing science.

However, my belief is not a scientific measurement.

That distinction does not threaten my spirituality. If anything, it gives me greater freedom to ask questions.

I can believe something and still investigate it.

I can have an experience and still ask myself what happened.

I can listen to a scientific explanation without feeling that somebody is attacking my spiritual beliefs.

I can also read scientific research without expecting science to validate everything that I already believe.

This is where I think spirituality and science can have a much more mature conversation.

Science requires methods, definitions, observation, measurement, evidence, criticism and the possibility that an explanation may change when better evidence becomes available. Spiritual experience is often personal, subjective and interpreted through someone's beliefs, culture, history and understanding of existence.

Those differences do not mean that the conversation has to stop.

They tell us where the difficulties begin.

There is another responsibility here that I believe is extremely important. We should be careful when interpreting unusual experiences, particularly when another person's well-being is involved. Not every unusual experience should immediately be described as spiritual, just as I don't believe every spiritual interpretation should automatically be ridiculed or dismissed.

Sometimes a person needs spiritual support. Sometimes a person needs medical or psychological support. Sometimes those things may exist alongside one another.

Recognising the possibility of a spiritual interpretation should never require someone to ignore their physical or mental health.

This is particularly important to me because spirituality should not remove personal responsibility. It should not become an explanation for every behaviour, every decision or everything that happens to us.

If I behave badly, I cannot simply blame an energy around me.

If I make a poor decision, I still have responsibility for that decision.

If I believe I have experienced communication from a spirit, I still have responsibility for how I interpret that experience and what I choose to do afterwards.

For me, spiritual growth requires that responsibility.

And perhaps this is why I continue to find the relationship between science and spirituality so interesting. I am not looking for one to destroy the other. I am interested in what happens when we allow ourselves to investigate human experience without deciding the conclusion before we have even asked the question.

There are things we know.

There are things we are learning.

There are things we believe.

There are things we experience.

And there are still things that we simply cannot explain.

I am comfortable with that.

Perhaps the better question is not whether science can prove every spiritual experience.

Perhaps we should also be asking:

What can science actually investigate about the experience, and what remains outside the question it is currently capable of answering?

That is a much bigger conversation.

And I think it is one worth having.