Science

This higher ground of understanding that unifies the psychological and the spiritual is a facet of a larger integration, one that also integrates it to the scientific method and its view of the world, a world that is in turn connected to our spiritual understanding. This unification addresses the common modern perspective in which the soul or self is seen as separate from the world or the cosmos, and separate also from God or Being. More precisely, our new metapsychology is embedded within, and is an expression of, a metaphysics that brings to a new level of unity thought and research in relation to the three facets of reality, soul/self, world/cosmos, and God/Being. In this metaphysics, spirituality and science are seen as two facets of the same thing, which involves recognizing a ground where the spiritual and the physical, in addition to the psychological, are seen to be meaningfully related. (Inner Journey Home, pg 11)

Science inquires into the surface manifestations of basic knowledge -- its horizontal dimension, so to speak -- and spirituality inquires into its depths -- its vertical dimension. Each arrives at detailed, extensive, and useful knowledge. Both attempt to discover basic knowledge that is uninfluenced by opinions or projections, or determined by prior constructions. By exploring the wholeness of basic knowledge -- both the vertical and horizontal dimensions -- we may be able to arrive at a more fundamental dimension of knowledge that embraces both. The important point here, however, is that when we explore the forms of basic knowledge it reveals to us its truths, its invariant patterns and universal principles. (Inner Journey Home, pg 63)

Western thought then has the potential and possibility of moving to a further stage, where its science can be grounded in the presence of basic knowledge, of the nous, and where its spirituality can achieve the Diamond crisp discrimination of this same basic knowledge. A true bridge will then appear between science and spirituality, to their mutual benefit and evolution. (Inner Journey Home, pg 471)

Science and materialism

Materialism is naturally the central philosophic position of our science, for our science is first and foremost a study of matter. Even the study of life involves the consideration of exclusively material components and physical processes. This orientation is actually a logical necessity for the separation of cosmos/world from the rest of Reality. It is clear that if we sincerely desire an amelioration of the rampant materialism of our times, we need not only to become more spiritual -- namely, to regain our soul -- but also to realize the unity of our Reality. And since the closest and most accessible facet for us is that of soul/self, we need to begin there. (Inner Journey Home, pg 12)

Science and discursive mind

The experience of the senses is not what the explorers of Reality in the wisdom traditions call direct experience. In fact, the wisdom traditions of humankind, Eastern and Western, ancient and modern, speak of sense experience as exactly what is immediately present in the way of direct experience. When they speak of direct experience in intuitive knowing or spiritual contemplation, they mean that the mind itself, the medium of knowing, is in direct contact with the object of knowledge. Of course, this kind of knowing is not recognized by our science; its view and method are precisely based on isolating the observer from what is observed. The philosophical position of science -- its exclusive reliance on the discursive mind and the physical senses for knowing -- cannot be the ultimate arbiter of truth if science is to be integrated with an understanding of the self and of God or Being. According to the senses, there are no such things as soul and God; they cannot be verified scientifically. Is there a more fundamental dimension of knowing, a real dimension that can support both science and spirituality? We will argue in this book that there is, and will begin our exploration with an unquestionable fact about the human soul, the fact that we have a capacity for knowing, any knowing. More precisely, we need to begin with ourselves, our body and mind and all their capacities of awareness and knowing. At least at the beginning, we have only ourselves as the agents of knowing, the organs of perception, and the locus of the revelation of truth. By investigating ourselves, questioning how we are aware and conscious, exploring how we perceive and know, wondering how we can discern truth from falsehood, we can begin to study the organ of awareness employed by all ways of knowing, the spiritual/mystical mode and the logical/scientific. (Inner Journey Home, pg 13)