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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

Rebranding the Supernatural: Can Science Really Absorb Spirit?

A Critical Response to Bobby Azarian's "Meta-Naturalism"

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

introduction

The conversation between science and spirituality has taken many forms over the years—ranging from open hostility to hopeful integration. In recent debates surrounding The Romance of Reality by cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian, a new rhetorical strategy has emerged: rebranding the supernatural as a kind of extended naturalism, or what Azarian calls “meta-naturalism.” Rather than reject teleology or spiritual experience outright, this move seeks to enfold them into a scientific worldview by expanding the definition of the “natural” to include phenomena once considered mystical or magical.

While this approach may offer a comforting synthesis to some, I argue in this essay that it ultimately collapses meaningful distinctions and evades key metaphysical commitments. After several rounds of public dialogue with Azarian—both on social media and in extended exchanges—it became clear that we were speaking past each other, not due to a mere “language game,” but because of fundamental philosophical differences about the nature of reality, causality, and explanation.

This essay is my final contribution to that conversation. It is not merely a rebuttal to Azarian's rhetorical strategy; it is a broader reflection on what is gained—and lost—when we try to naturalize spiritual language without doing justice to its metaphysical content. I offer a clear conceptual framework, identify recurring fallacies in the attempt to reconcile scientific and mystical worldviews too hastily, and argue that a respectful pluralism is better served by maintaining boundaries, not dissolving them in semantic fog.

The Meta-Naturalism Move

The border between science and spirituality has long been a contested one. Some seek to build bridges, others to protect boundaries. In recent years, cognitive neuroscientist and science communicator Bobby Azarian has joined that liminal effort—offering a vision of the cosmos that is at once natural, teleological, and spiritually inspiring. His book The Romance of Reality attempts to carve out a middle path between reductionist materialism and mystical metaphysics.

This effort is noble in spirit but flawed in execution. What begins as a provocative reframing of cosmic evolution ends as an exercise in rebranding the supernatural under the label of “meta-naturalism.” It is a rhetorical maneuver that seeks to resolve an age-old metaphysical tension by absorbing one domain into another. Rather than demarcating science from spirituality, Azarian aims to dissolve the boundary entirely.

To illustrate the stakes, let us briefly revisit the fourfold typology proposed in my earlier review of The Romance of Reality[1]:

Azarian objects to this scheme, arguing that the distinction between “natural” and “supernatural” is meaningless. He claims that anything shown to exist must be natural by definition—even if it was previously classified as spiritual, mystical, or supernatural. But this maneuver conflates epistemology with ontology, and classification with causation.

To clarify why this reclassification strategy is problematic, consider a homely example: the rainbow. In ancient cultures, the rainbow was often seen as a divine sign—an arched bridge between the gods and humankind, a covenant, or a mystical apparition. These were not metaphors, but literal beliefs. Then came the science of optics. Newton demonstrated that a rainbow results from the refraction, dispersion, and reflection of light in water droplets.

Science explained the phenomenon, but it did not validate the spiritual claim—it displaced it. No physicist would say that discovering the light spectrum confirmed the idea that the rainbow is a message from the gods. The phenomenon remained; its interpretation changed. The supernatural explanation was not absorbed into science. It was replaced.

The “Magic Proof”: A Tautology in Disguise

To cement his argument, Azarian introduces what he calls the “Magic Proof,” a quasi-formal argument designed to show that the distinction between natural and supernatural phenomena is incoherent. The structure is as follows:

If phenomenon x is classified as supernatural or magical at time t, and it is scientifically verified at time t + Δ, then x must be reclassified as natural. Therefore, all previously ‘magical’ phenomena that are shown to exist become natural by definition.

He concludes that “supernatural” is not a real category, only a provisional label for things science hasn't yet absorbed. As soon as they are verified, they join the natural world and retroactively lose their supernatural status.

But this is not a revelation—it's a tautology. It reasserts the trivial point that science only studies what it can verify. It does not follow that supernatural claims are meaningless, only that they cannot be empirically verified without being redefined.

The deeper issue is that the concept of the supernatural is not defined by ignorance, but by ontological independence from physical processes. God, Eros, or the Self, in traditional metaphysical systems, are not “nature we don't yet understand”—they are the conditions of nature's existence. They are, by definition, outside the causal chains of empirical science.

To reduce such concepts to natural processes is not a scientific breakthrough but a relabeling operation. Azarian's “Magic Proof” assumes what it seeks to prove: that everything real is natural. This is a definitional choice, not a logical discovery (see Appendix).

In collapsing the natural and supernatural into one meta-category, Azarian undermines the distinctions that allow us to make sense of divergent worldviews. And in doing so, he flattens metaphysical nuance under the guise of synthesis.

Collapsing the Distinctions

Azarian's redefinition of spiritual language into scientific vocabulary leads to a conceptual slide. Words like “magic,” “spiritual,” or “supernatural” become linguistic decoys, meant to elicit awe while remaining epistemically safe. We are told that “the world is magical,” but also that this magic is mathematically modelable. That science unlocks the mysteries of spirit. That telos is real—but only as a dynamic pattern in information flow.

But this move is intellectually unstable. If the world is truly enchanted, then it operates by principles irreducible to mechanism. If, however, everything is governed by physical law—even if that law is complex and emergent—then spirit is not a causal agent, only a metaphor for intricate regularities.

Ken Wilber, for instance, speaks of Eros as the driving force behind cosmic evolution—a metaphysical impulse toward complexity, consciousness, and self-awareness. Azarian tries to claim a similar narrative while disavowing metaphysics. But one cannot have cosmic purpose without positing a source of that purpose—whether divine, noumenal, or intrinsic. Otherwise, “purpose” becomes a hollow metaphor.

Why It Matters in the Real World

At first glance, these debates might appear purely academic. But how we conceptualize the relationship between science and spirituality has real-world consequences. It shapes what counts as knowledge, how we educate, what worldviews gain legitimacy, and which practices we consider valid for psychological or societal flourishing.

If we blur the line between science and metaphysics, we risk importing ideological agendas into the epistemic authority of science. We make it easier for spiritual movements to claim scientific legitimacy without bearing the burden of empirical accountability. Terms like “energy,” “consciousness,” and “intelligence” begin to float free of testable hypotheses, and soon we are back in the world of pseudoscience and “quantum healing.”

Conversely, when we reduce all spiritual experience to naturalistic mechanisms, we risk disenchanting the human spirit and losing the psychological richness of existential and ethical traditions. But the solution is not to call everything spiritual “natural,” or everything natural “magical.” It is to respect the boundaries that keep our conceptual maps coherent—and to cultivate humility about what science can and cannot say.

Science gains its power not from explaining everything, but from knowing where its limits are. And spirituality gains its integrity not from mimicking science, but from pointing beyond it.

Conclusion: Toward a More Honest Dialogue

Bobby Azarian's “meta-naturalism” attempts to offer a both/and solution to the science-spirituality divide. But in doing so, it risks becoming a neither/nor. Neither fully scientific nor fully spiritual, it inhabits a liminal space where rhetorical flourish replaces philosophical rigor.

If we are to have a meaningful dialogue between worldviews, we must first acknowledge their differences, not dissolve them. Only then can we engage in a genuine pluralism—one that respects the integrity of both science and spirit, without trying to smuggle one into the other through semantic games.

Azarian's vision is romantic, yes—but romance, however inspiring, is not a substitute for clarity. And clarity, in the end, is what allows true dialogue to begin.

APPENDIX: THE MAGIC PROOF

Theorem 1: For any phenomenon x ∈ S (classified as supernatural or magical), if P(x) (scientific verification of x) occurs, then x is necessarily reclassified such that x ∈ N (natural).

Proof:

Let x be a phenomenon such that C(x) = 0 (supernatural/magical)

Suppose P(x) (scientific verification of x) occurs

By definition of scientific verification, any verified phenomenon becomes part of the naturalistic framework

Therefore, after verification, x ∈ N and C(x) = 1 (natural)

This creates a logical contradiction with the initial classification

Therefore, the statement "x is supernatural/magical" becomes false immediately upon verification

This proof demonstrates the paradoxical nature of the concept of "magic" or the "supernatural." By definition, these categories include phenomena that operate outside natural laws or scientific understanding. However, once such phenomena are scientifically verified, they necessarily become reclassified as "natural," as they have been shown to operate within the framework of scientific understanding, even if that framework needed to be expanded to accommodate them.

Corollary 1.1: The statement "Magic exists" is unprovable within a naturalistic framework, because any verification of a supposedly magical phenomenon immediately transforms it into a non-magical phenomenon.

Corollary 1.2: The demarcation between N and S is not fixed but shifts with the expansion of scientific knowledge, such that Nt ⊂ Nt+ Δ for any positive time interval Δ during which new knowledge is acquired. So basically the Neo-Darwinian view was leaving out teleology and when you have an incomplete framework in this way, a "telos" will appear *completely indistinguishable from a supernatural phenomenon (or magic).

NOTES

[1] See also: Frank Visser, "A Unifying Theory of Reality, Review of The Romance of Reality by Bobby Azarian", www.integralworld.net, July 2023 and "The Romance of Explanation, Can Telos Survive Naturalism?", www.integralworld.net June 2025.