As long as we live, we will have questions, and to some of these questions we will discover answers.
The seeking and discovery of answers on profound matters is called Philosophy. The difference between ordinary questions and answers, and philosophy is that philosophy begins as and remains a wonder.

Because we are born innocent and ignorant we are filled with wonder. Wonder is that awesome quality we experience in the constant seeking and discovery of answers.

Questions we all have but where do we find answers?
We can find answers either outside or within our own being.

As infants and toddlers we learn first hand by imitating and experiencing our outer world.
Then as children, armed with language and access to academic and ideological (including religious) schooling our learning becomes second hand, less personal, mostly mundane and boring. The vast majority of children, begin to equate learning with drudgery and this kills wonder.

With the power of language, and script we humans as social creatures indulge in constant chatter, communicating with other humans and learn about the outer world. Starting with formal schooling and modern social institutions learning is primarily directed at enabling people to find and remain in employment or some vocation to be useful to society and others.

Unfortunately most of modern learning lacks wonder. Without wonder we have answers and knowledge but land up as uninspiring individuals as part of a frigid, almost lifeless society, lacking in the best of our human qualities and capabilities.

This is why philosophy is so vital to human well being.

Those philosophers who look outwards begin to walk on the path of Science.
Every scientific discovery began as a Philosophical question.
That is why we say, 'the question is more important than the answer'.
When we ask the right question, we might arrive at the right answer, but with a wrong question, probably never.

Science is like a forest the trees reaching for the heights while probing deeper at the same time integrating with other trees representing various other scientific disciplines. The realm of science is infinite and can engage us in ceaseless wonder.

In science we keep on dissecting and looking into the smaller and smaller, the deeper we probe. Using a process of elimination we arrive at an answer. We go from the whole to the parts. Therefore scientists who look at only one dimension or discipline will miss the whole universe, just as by looking at just one tree alone we will miss the forest.

Unfortunately the more we look outwards the less we search within ourselves, our inner world.

Some answers cannot be found outside but within our being. This is the spiritual quest and it does not divide but rather harmonises and synthesises. It makes the whole from the parts.
It needs neither emotion, nor intellect, nor matter, all it needs is energy.

In spirituality rather than looking from within outwards, we look inwards from the outside. From the material and intellectual world journeying into the spiritual world.

What does spirituality reveal to us?
The destructive character and uselessness of anger. The transient nature of greed, lust, and attachment to things and relationships for they are not permanent.
In the ultimate we will become one with the universe, after having lived our lives awakened and one with the universe.

Somehow it is wrongly believed that the spiritual journey is the end of living, rather it is the beginning of living. Living a life with awareness, harmony and meaning. Sometimes even doing the unbelievable and unimaginable even becoming violent to sustain that harmony so essential to universal well being.

To live completely with meaning and joy, to achieve and be happy is to harmonise our finite being with the infinite universe within and without ourselves.

As a philosopher I am both a scientist and a spiritual being.
What about you?