Still Seeking

Last night, during our Seekers Dinner, we had spirited discussion kicked off by our consideration of the Albert Einstein quote: “Science without religion is blind; and religion without science is lame.”

Our conversation ultimately alighted upon the power and importance of spiritual experiences. We spoke of awe in the face of natural beauty, of our halting attempts to still our restless minds, of the way our desires for detailed scientific explanations for what we call “spiritual” may sometimes get in the way; we spoke of crying at the opera, of the yoga “corpse pose,” and of Nietzsche’s idea that, “That which we have spoken is already dead in our hearts,” which included a hilarious child-hood story about “Attila the Nun.”

So in honor of all that, and in thanksgiving to the great thinker who got our juices flowing last night, here is Einstein on the importance of spiritual experience:

The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.

Our next Seekers Dinner is Thursday, November 20, 7:30 – 9:30 pm.