Science and Metaphysics

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Why Rational Minds Need Not Reject the Spiritual

Modern science has given humanity an astonishing ability to describe and measure the physical world. Yet even the greatest scientific minds occasionally encounter insights, intuitions, or experiences that feel larger than the conceptual tools available to them. Einstein spoke of a “sense of the mysterious.” Hawking acknowledged the presence of something “beyond full comprehension.” Neil deGrasse Tyson describes himself as agnostic, still seeking clarity about what lies beyond measurable phenomena.

What is striking is not their uncertainty, but the limits of their vocabulary.
Brilliant as they were, they grew up within religious traditions that framed the divine in anthropomorphic, doctrinal, or moralistic terms. When they encountered something that felt vast, impersonal, or foundational, a kind of numinosity, they simply had no name for it. Their science remained fully intact, but their metaphysical language lacked coherence.

The Persistence Paradox

What you resist may indeed persist. But what you persist (without examining hidden motivations) may resist you. The Persistence Paradox posits that there is a kind of desire that becomes soo desperate and fused with our sense of identity that the wanting becomes such a weight, and in trying so hard to claim it, we actually end up pushing it further out of reach.

"Freud would have called this the tyranny of unconscious motivation, the hidden wish beneath the visible want. Jung would have called it the shadow of desire, the place where yearning collapses into compulsion.

And modern spirituality tries to package it neatly inside a single, shimmering word: manifestation.”

In this latest piece, Saturn’s Daughter explores why manifestation alone doesn’t cut it. She delves into the psychology of wanting too much shaped by the relationship between hyper-focus and attachment-anxiety and discusses why our unconscious rejects our conscious desires.

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One Source, Many Windows

The Unity Behind Revelation and the Place of Christianity

Among all the world’s great traditions, three streams stand out for their profound influence on the inner life of humanity: the Indic, the Abrahamic, and their meeting place in mystical experience. My own lifelong exploration has taken me across these streams, always returning to one fundamental intuition:

All revelation flows from the same Source - the Universal Consciousness that breathes wisdom into the human spirit.

If the Source is one, then convergence is not accidental. It is inevitable.

Where traditions diverge, it is not in essence but in expression of the divine message through human understanding. Such expression has been filtered through:

• culture
• language
• historical conditions
• symbol systems
• and the psychological needs of the communities they addressed.

Remove the filters, and what remains is the same perennial truth.

Yet for many years I struggled with one gap: integrating Christianity within this universal pattern, especially when comparing the spiritual evolution depicted in the Dasāvatāra and the Abrahamic Prophetic line, as I did in this article.

• In Hindu thought, evolution manifests outwardly (physical form) and inwardly (spiritual attainment).
• In the Abrahamic tradition, the Prophetic sequence reflects the inner evolution of human consciousness: from moral law, to wisdom, to compassion, to unity.

But Christianity, although a key element in the Abrahamic progression, was harder to place, not because its ethical message was alien, but because its doctrinal formulation diverged sharply from the pattern shared by the Vedas/Upanishads and the Qur’an (when read with clarity).

And yet, when we look closely, the teachings of Jesus himself align beautifully with those perennial truths. They are clearly from the same source.

1. The Jesus of the Gospels: A Teacher of Inner Transformation

When we read the actual words of Jesus, setting aside later theological layering, we find teachings that fit perfectly into the Indic-Vedic window:

• Love as the highest realization - This echoes the Upanishadic “Where there is love, there is the Self.”
• Compassion and non-judgment - Mirroring the Buddhist and Jain ethic of ahimsā and metta.
• “Die before you die”: ego death - The heart of Advaita, Sufism, and Yogic transformation.
• “The kingdom of Heaven is within you” - A non-dual declaration if there ever was one.
• Rebirth through inner awakening - Not physical resurrection, but transformation of consciousness.

This Jesus, the mystic, the reformer, the awakener, fits seamlessly into the continuum of universal revelation.

2. The Difficult Point: The Doctrine of Jesus as a Saviour-God

What troubled me, and what may trouble some thoughtful seekers within Christianity itself, is not the teachings of Jesus but the claims made about him by later followers.

By Jesus' own recorded words:

• he never once asked to be worshipped
• he did not speak of himself as God
• he did not claim to be a divine sacrifice in order to save souls.

Instead, he:

• called himself “son of man”
• taught complete surrender to the One God
• pointed always beyond himself to the Source

The doctrines of incarnation as God, vicarious atonement and exclusive salvation only through belief do not arise from Jesus’ own voice. They emerge from post-crucifixion interpretation; sincere, heartfelt, devotional, but historically mediated through Paul’s letters, later church councils and the needs of a growing religious community. Such natural evolution is seen in all religious traditions.

This clarification does not diminish mainstream Christianity. It simply places it within the very pattern we see everywhere: The teachings of a realized master become a religion after his departure; and religions always reflect the cultures that preserve them.

3. How Christianity Fits the Universal Pattern

If we return to the core of Jesus’ message and not the later doctrine, Christianity becomes not an outlier but a jewel in the same necklace.

• Jesus reflects the “Bhakti” stage of spiritual evolution
• He embodies unconditional love, forgiveness, surrender, and the softening of the heart.
• He represents the blooming of compassion within the human spiritual journey
• He mirrors the symbolism of divine love through an incarnation (Krishna).

His teachings are entirely consistent with Advaita when interpreted inwardly

• “I and the Father are one” becomes a statement of realized unity, not ontological exclusivity.
• His call to ego-death mirrors the Sufi and Upanishadic Self-realization process
• The cross becomes a symbol of the dying of the lower self so that the higher Self may live.

Thus Christianity absolutely fits the evolutionary Abrahamic arc, not through doctrinal literalism but through the mystical heart of Jesus’ own words.

4. The goal of this essay

None of this diminishes the devotion of Christians who see Jesus as divine. It simply recognizes that the divine can manifest in:

• many forms,
• many cultures,
• many languages,
• while still pointing to the one Reality.

A Christian who reads the Gospels with openness is unlikely to be offended by this view. In fact, many Christian mystics (Meister Eckhart, St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila) have independently reached the same non-dual understanding of our relationship with the Source.

What this essay offers is not criticism, but integration:

• Jesus’ teachings join the great river of universal revelation.
• His message aligns with the Vedic, Yogic, Buddhist, and Quranic streams.
• His compassion and inner wisdom are indispensable to humanity’s spiritual evolution.

Revelation is one. Forms are many. Truth is indivisible.

Does Mind precede Matter?

The following chain of events began with a question posted in Substack which I could not resist.
"What are you made of - Mind or Matter? Which comes first?"

Applying what I had learned previously from the Upanishads about the 4 layers of the mind, I suggested the following:

The physical part of the mind, which forms as the brain develops, can only exist because of the brain. Therefore matter must precede mind.

But the awareness or consciousness, which is what survives the death of the body, already existed before the body was formed. Therefore that part of the mind surely precedes matter.

I thought I was being quite clever.

Gabriel, who had posed the question in the first place, came back with the following response.

"Agreed. Though I would go so far as to collapse the distinction. Maybe matter is the image of the localized mind?"

That was a startling thought which took me into exploration of an entirely different concept.

Is the world of maya that we live in really only a construct of our own mind? What are the implications for our day to day activities and in our interactions with the other beings we encounter in our maya?

I have examined the idea in my Blog essay for this week.

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Saturn's Daughter

After posting last week's article about a wounded woman speaking her truth and splitting the illusion, I pondered about woundedness in general. My stunted observation had been that, while men appeared to shrug off woundedness, women were deeply affected by their wounds. This led me to wonder, do deeply wounded souls incarnate as women in order to be able to process their woundedness?

I posed the question to several women in my life. My daughter came back with a sharp rebuttal: "Do you think men are not wounded?"

That led us into an animated discussion which culminated in this week's article about woundedness and incarnation. The discussion also reminded my daughter that she had a library of thoughts filed in her mind awaiting release. They had not been published yet because they were not appropriate for her web pages which were work related. This event was the trigger for her to initiate a philosophical presence on Substack as Saturn's Daughter

She has given me permission to mirror her Substack posts in my Blog. So join me in welcoming Shanee Singam as my second invited Guest Author.

Guest Authors

Saturn's Daughter