Thus we have gone far beyond Cartesian Dualism, all of the way to a unified conception of reality, in which everything is made of the same stuff (i.e., mind), while there are qualitative differences within the mind, between robust realities and transient illusions. Still, the metaphysical problem of mind versus matter is resolved, with qualia being the primary universal substances, and with the patterns thereof being the subset that we consider to be material (though still made entirely of mind).

 

If the material realm is the subset, and the mental realm is the superset, and if spirituality was always conceived as the realm of conscious beings who could transcend the limitations of matter, the mental and spiritual realms occupy the same territory. They also have a similarity in kind. Furthermore, if the definition of reality is that it is persistent, and if God is defined as that which always was, and always will be, God is the essence of the material realm, as the object of spirituality. So it isn't that God is real — it's that God is reality.

 

To be clear, such does not constitute proof of the existence of the spiritual realm. These are definitions (i.e., axioms), not proofs, and there isn't any way of proving definitions. Assuming that they cannot be dismissed for lack of self-consistency, the only other way to judge definitions is to see if they help us formulate problems in solvable ways. For example, the Atomic Theory doesn't get its confirmation from whether or not it makes sense that matter would be granular, as clumps of protons, neutrons, and electrons — the validation comes from how well those clumps account for the observable behaviors of matter. Likewise, defining reality as qualia, and patterns thereof, passes all of the consistency checks, all of the way down to the metaphysical bedrock. So the only other test is whether or not such a definition would be useful in practical problem solving. The most critical test would be to see if spirituality can answer the question of why we are here. Without a sense of purpose, we will never sort anything out, because we won't have a standard of value by which to judge things — it will be just so many meaningless little facts, but without any solutions, for lack of a metric for identifying problems.

 

Immediately we realize that spirituality is the only construct capable of supplying a sense of purpose. So spirituality is founded on irreducible essences (i.e., qualia), and it provides the framework for making sense of the entire problem domain. Such constitutes validation of the spiritual approach, as rigorous as any in the physical sciences.

 

Of course, not all spirituality is sensible, and this reasoning does not legitimize all notions of God, of which there are many, some of which being full of contradictions. This merely certifies the correctness of the basic approach. It does not say that there isn't a way of making mistakes. Just as science is fundamentally correct in its methods, that doesn't make it fool-proof. So we must be meticulous in the way we build on this foundation, or the superstructure will still fall down, even if there wasn't any problem with the foundation.

 

So... if it's all just a matter of perception, what are the metrics for truth? Some would argue that it's hard to tell when one has made a mistake in a spiritual inquiry, because without any objective standards, there aren't any absolute falsehoods, because there aren't any absolute truths — it's just whatever one wants to believe.

 

Such is the nature of some spiritual frameworks, but not this one. We already found an incontrovertible metric for truth: robustness and persistence. Truths have to be demonstrable and reproducible, and this is how we will find our way through the theological wilderness. Any person who claims that God always was, and always will be, and then attributes phenomena to God in a way that is not reproducible, has committed a bait-and-switch. Just because the mental realm is the superset doesn't mean that any belief is just as real as any other. Only those ideas that withstand critical scrutiny shall be considered real. In other words, we must employ the strictest scientific standards in this study.

 

In fact, we intend to raise the bar a bit, and apply scientific methods in a way that is actually even more rigorous than what has become "standard" in the scientific community. Recall that science supposedly proves that spirituality doesn't exist. It might be true that mysticism can be refuted, but this system isn't mystical, and it would be an undistributed middle to rule out all spiritual systems because some of them are unsupportable. So the possibility remains that a non-mystical spiritual system could be fully rational. To the objection that the existence of the spiritual realm cannot be demonstrated, we just have to remind the "scientist" to take a look at the instrumentation used to develop that objection. Mechanistic science not only dismisses spiritual thoughts — it dismisses internal states altogether. To a scientist, a human being is just a biological mechanism — a robot, of sorts. Does a robot have internal states? By rigorous standards, the answer has to be negative. If we can fully describe the behavior of the robot without any need for internal states, then such states (if they existed) wouldn't do anything, meaning that they would be functionally non-existent. If we could fully describe the behavior of a human being in mechanistic terms, it would be 100% machine, and 0% conscious. And without consciousness, then of course there is no spirituality. But there, scientists break their own rules. For something to be considered real, it has to be capable of reliably impacting sensory transducers and triggering subjective recognitions. And all scientific constructs are commonly understood to play by mental rules.

 

How can "scientists" forget these simple facts?

 

Easy — science factors out consciousness, in attempting to find those principles that exist independent of our consciousness of them (i.e., the "real" ones). In other words, materialism is intentionally blind to the existence of consciousness, and that's useful. The product of that process is robotics, completely devoid of internal states. But if we take a step back, we see the action of a filter that guaranteed the absence of internal states in the conclusions, and just looking at what passes a filter is no grounds for generalizations concerning the constitution of everything. A more careful inquiry leads invariably to the conclusion that materialism is a construct in the mind of the observer, and the construct is made of qualia, which are the primary units of sensation, and which are internal states if they are anything at all.

 

Herein we are witnessing the emergence of a true science of mind-matter. All sciences began with vague notions of the existence of things, but only became mature sciences when they learned to take the position and disposition of the observer into account. So there are measuring instruments, and there are data collected by them, which are definitely real, and then there are hypotheses related to the data, which might be real, if they stand up to continued investigation. A mature science of the mind will undoubtedly acknowledge that the instrument of its trade is the CNS; the data are perceptions; and the hypotheses are patterns of perceptions that will be tested for consistency. Insofar as a neuroscientist studying a test subject is one CNS studying another, the entire endeavor — scientist, instrumentation, data, hypothesis, and conclusion — is completely within the mental realm. And it isn't that robots have internal states — it's that cognitive beings can develop constructs that do not themselves possess internal states. But robots don't need their own internal states, already being fully contained within ours.

 

What is the advantage to framing all of this as a spiritual inquiry? If the intent is to be scientific about it, there are secular treatments of these topics that would seem to be more useful.

 

Yet modern science has a long way to go before it will constitute a working belief system. We need the framework for answering ethical and social questions. This has been the domain of religion since the beginning of recorded history. If we are to contemplate the prospect of a rational belief system, which includes practical morality, we must necessarily venture into territory first explored by theologians. Therein, we would do well to assimilate what they have learned. And we should be honest about it. We could mask the true nature of this inquiry, by inventing a new set of terms to describe a scientific treatment of the mental realm, as applied to everyday life. But if we borrow heavily from the wisdom of the ages, while feeling obligated to change the names of all of the topics just so that they don't sound religious, it will only confuse the issues. The more straight-forward approach is simply to call things by their common names. Invariably, territory that was first (and to date, best) explored by theologians will be described in religious terminology, even while we re-map that territory with surveying techniques that weren't around in ancient times.

 

Neither can we evade topics previously dominated by religions, for fear of getting seduced into mysticism. Religions are practical belief systems, and despite all of the confusion that they have caused, with primitive superstitions and with priestly prerogatives, they nevertheless have functional components that are quite necessary in any working system. So we have to go there, even if we have to continually remind ourselves that this is a modern analysis of the human condition, not an attempt to rationalize ancient beliefs. If we expose spirituality to the light of logic, some of the religious ideas will get labeled as "just perceptions," while others will turn out to be robust enough to be considered "real." When we're done, we'll know what we have.