Listening to a podcast about how contemporary elites have made science and technique a sort of secular religion prompted in me this thought: a theist (God-centered) and a scientific paradigm are completely alike in that it’s centered on something other than one’s self. In the case of theism, the focus is on an all-powerful, omniscient God that’s outside of ourselves, and to which we must serve and conform. In the case of science, that central role is Nature, which is all powerful and contains all things. The scientist is external to that Nature, and can only comply with its rules by discovering them.

(Theist) religion and science are a search for the understanding of this Great Other. In both cases, one’s self is seen as a weak and mostly disconnected thing off that Great other.

The “Eastern” angle we’re missing (for the most part) in the scientific tradition is to understand that we, I, you ARE the Great Other. That is, that reality is projected from within. The atoms don’t make the mind, the mind makes the atoms. This is not just about consciousness, but about everything that can be perceived.

In the scientific tradition, even when you look at your own skin under the microscope it’s not you, it’s skin, Nature, external to you, that you’re looking at.

Science’s major advance over theism is the concept of replicability. Rather than convincing or coercing others into following something, you encourage them to see for themselves and replicate your results. If we retain the can-do attitude of going and understanding things for ourselves (which is something encouraged in many Buddhist traditions), how do we go about exploring the Great Other as something from within?

Replication doesn’t require externality. But it probably means that if reality is subjective, and still replicable, there’s much more in common between “subjective” selves than what makes them different. The subject is, perhaps, not myriad but approximates towards a single reality.