Spiritual technology

None of us have seen an atom.  How do we know they exist?  Because people who study these things tell us they exist, and more importantly, because the belief that they exist has concrete tangible benefits.  We can predict chemical reactions.  We can build new materials.  This idea has clear utility.

Should we not demand the same of spiritual paths?  What spiritual technology does, for example, Christianity offer?  Where does it say “if you do x, y, and z, then a, b and c will happen”?

The thing is that much of the purported benefit of Christian (and Islamic) belief rests in what will happen in the NEXT life.  And for a great many people, as this creed is received, it amounts practically to a system of social control through conditioned terror of unseen but important realities.  People cross lifetimes afraid of sinning, because they fear hell.  In such conditions, true personal learning is impossible.

What I want to help develop is something which reliably builds perceptual coherence, personal moralities based on that perceptual coherence, and social realities that are desirable that are an emergent property of the pervasive presence of the first two.

All the contemplative/meditative practices have what they claim to be technologies of the spirit, but we have reached a time where we need to make them actual technologies, to test them, to apply the methods of science.

I am being a little foggy, but this is something I felt today. I will allow it to continue to develop.