The book, God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder – Echoes of Ultimate Reality In the New Physics, by Brian Hines, Threshold Books, I find has brought the science versus religion debate to a higher plane.

Rumi says, Window-shoppers, for God-sakes, buy something!

These Spiritual Window-Shoppers
These spiritual window-shoppers,
who idly ask, ‘How much is that?’ Oh, I’m just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.
What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.
Where did you go? “Nowhere.”
What did you have to eat? “Nothing much.”

Even if you don’t know what you want,
buy – something – to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.

Rumi Says:

In truth, everything and everyone
is a shadow of the Beloved.
And our seeking is His seeking,
and our words are His words.
We search for Him here and there.
While looking right at Him,
sitting by His side, we ask:
‘O Beloved, where is the Beloved?’
Enough with such questions!
Let silence take you to the core of life.
All your talk is worthless when compared
with one whisper of the Beloved.

In this ground-breaking study, Hines demonstrates the parallels between the discoveries of the new physics and the revelations of the great mystics, whom he describes as “spiritual scientists.” One of the mystics that he heavily quotes is Jalaluddin Rumi, the great 12th century Sufi poet who, by the way, has become America’s most widely read poet in recent years, a hopeful sign. Those of you who have come to enjoy reading Rumi may find yourself gaining some new insight into Rumi’s true mystical Sufi teachings by reading this book. There’s a Rumi poem on practically every page.

Hines contends that there is a final truth that is echoed in the findings of material science. But in order to come to a full realization of the ultimate truth behind this material plane of creation, he says we must be willing to take a look at the possibility that the mystics are right, that there exist spiritual dimensions of reality (higher planes, spheres, levels of vibration). He points out that it’s not good science to dismiss out of hand this possibility. Materialistic belief systems, traditionally follow a self-imposed rule that only material phenomena can be used to explain the material universe. Hines says, “in a sense, physics already has biased answers to the big sweepstakes question, 'What is Ultimate Reality?,’ by the very rules it uses to screen out certain entries. In effect, the fine print of the entry form says, ‘Any answer concerning the true nature of nature which unnaturally looks outside of nature for explanation will not be accepted,” (The bad grammar is deliberate. The author has a good sense of humor.)

Science, like religion, has its entrenched orthodox belief systems, and the revelers of new truth are sometimes branded as “heretics,” as least for while, until experiments can be repeated, observations can be made, and the evidence of a new discovery finally gets accepted by the scientific community. Brian Hines is a master of logic, reason, analytical thinking, and scientific methods. I admire the way he skillfully makes the case for his views. His book will inform you about “Super String Theory,” “the Big Bang,” “a Theory of Everything,” and all the latest observations of physicists on quantum mechanics. He’s satisfied that the investigative approach of scientists is really quite good when it comes to making observations about the discrete parts of the material universe, yet “is nonsensical if one’s goal is knowledge of ultimate reality.” He asks, “Can a snail ever comprehend a garden?”

There’s a delightful metaphor in the book about a snail encountering a garden hose. With its limited awareness, how much empirical data can our snail gather? Can our scientifically inclined snail even comprehend that it is living in a garden? From the ground level what would our slow-moving snail think of a garden hose? Being five feet or more above the surface of the earth, human eyes could observe the hose as it snakes its way across the lawn, eventually connecting to a faucet. But the snail, with its confined perspective, may never comprehend these mysteries, and can’t even begin to know of their creators.

The main focus of this new book is the spiritual science of mysticism, which according to the author allows us to master the universe at a snail’s pace – or at a leap if we’re willing to do the necessary research, which for Hines means discovering contemplation, “the research tool of spiritual science.” For the author, ultimate reality will never be found by looking through the material lens of a microscope or telescope, but through another kind of lens: contemplative meditation. He divides human consciousness into four states of being. Most of us only operate in the worlds of feeling, thinking, and observing. The fourth state of consciousness is ignored, or remains dormant. However, the mystically inclined are desirous of spending some time in that other state: the inner world of contemplation. Although they too spend most of their time in the objective outer world, they yearn for something more, asking, “Is this all there is?”

For the mystic, both science and religion appear to confine themselves to feeling, thinking and observing in the outer world of the five senses, unaware of the fourth option, contemplation. Religion often suggests that in the next life we’ll experience the world of spirit – that we’re not interested in this experience right now. Religion focuses on rites, rituals and other physical plane activities that symbolize or illustrate eternal truths, or on indirect intellectual information about the illusive world of spirit in the form of true doctrines, creeds, theology and salvation history. Most remain content with the material-intellectual paradigm. But mystic souls say to themselves: “OK, I have found the true holy book, now I want to start searching for Eden.” Or. “I have faith that this spiritual road map that I have been given will take me to my destination, so I will get in my car and start driving.” Or, “this cookbook (path) that I have found is the ‘true cookbook,’ is reliable and good, therefore I will choose a recipe, gather the ingredients I need, turn the oven on, bake something and satisfy my hunger.” For the mystic, fighting over which “cook book” is the “true cook book” is not enough. Beyond feeling good about the “menus” or “maps” of their tradition, the mystic yearns to move his or her consciousness into that ineffable fourth state of being, the world of contemplative meditation, in order to find sustenance for the soul in the other world, and to finally reach a vantage point where observations about the steps and stages, the levels and planes that lead to ultimate reality, can be made. In order to really know about spirit, we have to become spirit. Mystics believe that this is possible, but we don’t need to take their word for it. We don’t need to limit ourselves to just believing in untested theories. We must get beyond reading books on meditation. If we’re really serious, we can make our own attempt to repeat the experiments of mystics. Spiritual scientists advocate that we “Learn the meditation practice, then do the meditation practice!”

If a scientist claims to be getting a fusion reaction – a burst of energy by combining certain ingredients together, other scientists will want to repeat the this experiment to see if they get the same results. If they’re making a sincere effort, they will learn every detail of what happened, and will faithfully duplicate every single step that took place during the original experiment. They will not say for instance, “We didn’t have any hydrogen so we used helium instead.”

So, too, in spiritual science we ought to make a sincere effort to duplicate the experiments of masters with accuracy in every detail. This is where Westerners usually get into trouble. When it comes to, let’s say, learning about biology or chemistry, most of us recognize the need to attend classes and have a teacher. But, coming from a very anti-traditional culture, we approach spirituality with a do-it-yourself attitude, saying “Why do I need a teacher?” “Why do I need to chant these particular five names, why not three, or seven others I can think of?” “I have this old book published in 1939, isn’t that good enough?” “Can’t I download everything I need to know off the Internet?” “Why do I need to meditate anyway?!” According to Brian Hines, in order to get complete and accurate instruction we must tap into the ancient, tried-and-true wisdom of a spiritual tradition that has a living teacher, faithfully duplicate the experiment of contemplative meditation, and then analyze our results. Hines is a follower of the Radhaswami Masters of India who say a charge of spiritual energy needs to be transmitted from master to student.

A shift in consciousness takes place during contemplative meditation. Through meditation techniques imparted by a living master or shaikh, a student learns to temporarily transcend his or her awareness of the objective outer world. Contemplation begins by studying the nature of human consciousness itself, independent of the content of consciousness. If we can tune out the never-ending stream of impressions: emotions, fantasies, images, concepts, sensory perceptions, observations, thoughts, dreams – the whole kit and caboodle that we are aware of either when our eyes are open or closed, awake, or asleep—we can discover another level of consciousness. Hines uses an analogy of TV channels. “Before a new channel can be received, or more accurately, a whole new bandwidth, like going from analog to digital on a television, the old channels must be tuned out.”

Like Galileo discovering new worlds through the lens of his telescope, mystics have been trying to tell humanity for eons of something quite similar. The reason why the contemplative state of being is still hidden from most of us is that, unlike Galileo’s telescope, in order to look through this particular lens, the third eye or inner vision, we mustn’t focus on the outward sensory impressions, but go in the opposite direction: into inner space. As Rumi says, the workshop and treasure of God is in nonexistence [another kind of reality that’s spiritual, neither physical or of the mind]. You are deceived by existence, so how could you know about nonexistence.”

James Bean reviews books and music for the Wisdom Radio Network and other stations via a syndicated radio program called Spiritual Awakening, and teaches Sant Mat Meditation and Surat Shabda Yoga.