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)
