Hi DA –
I do not know how Hinduism works, particularly as it connects to 'new' knowledge. The Abrahamic religions' knowledge base is all from thousands of years ago. The Torah, the NT, the Quran; all were set in stone a long time ago. Religions such as these cannot correct themselves on latest knowledge as there isn't any!
I think the crux of this discussion rests on Revelation.
The Abrahamic Traditions all turn on this point. If there’s no Revelation, then the fundamental core of the religion is void, and all that follows. (What you’re left with is speculation and a system of ethics and morality.) Hinduism doesn’t use the word, rather they say ‘Recalled’ or “Remembered’, but it amounts to the same thing. The Tao, I would say, declares the same. 'The Tao that cannot be spoken’ is either metaphysical speculation, or it is a revealed actuality. Enlightenment in traditional Buddhism, the same again … (Does not Deism, in that sense, stands or fall under the same principle – is God an actuality, or a speculative possibility?)
The content of Revelation is by its very nature a glimpse of the Transcendent, the Absolute, the timeless and the eternal, so if one accepts Revelation as such, then the human sciences can neither add to nor detract from that, it’s simply outside their purview. It can shed light on the discourse, which is what theology and metaphysics is and does, what philosophy traditionally did, but generally since the Age of Enlightenment (so-called) it largely longer does, having accepted certain self-declared limitations or horizons.
Neuroscience, for example, can tell us certain things about the mind which one might assume defines mystical states. When we are talking about mystical states, oracles or prophets, we can say that their states might well be brought about by neurological conditions (the is a correlation between epilepsy and mystical states, for example) – but we cannot say for certain that such is universally the case.
There are a range of states, from the ‘mystical’ or pneumatic to the mental or psychic, that can trigger an epileptic or other neurological reaction, when the mind is ‘overwhelmed’ by a certain apprehension. A sunset or some other sublime aspect of nature can induce tears or joy, for example. I think the contemporary notion of ‘bliss’ is actually one of the psychic states and attainable with practice and a certain psychological outlook, whereas a sense of 'one-ness’ and the ‘all in all’ can be an authentic transcendental state …
I know of one person who experienced a religious epiphany watching a rose bloom, another when looking at a stand glass window, another when he heard a choir singing. Are these all just personal, subjective psychologisms, or was there a transcending event, that is, did the event open a way to the Transcendent Other?
Like love, no science can say. It can observe, monitor and measure, but that’s all it can do.
