Quest Magazine

By Don Elwert

Originally printed in the March - April 2005 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Elwert, Don. "Was It An Angel." Quest  93.2 (MARCH - APRIL 2005):59

My mother was in a nursing home and needed twenty-four hour care. Cancer had taken hold of her body and we were told it was just a matter of time. Not wanting to die alone, my mother asked if someone could stay with her, so I volunteered. We reminisced about Dad and my sister, who both died at an early age. Mom said that when it is a person's time to go to heaven, they know. She wasn't sure how, but she believed the person just knew.

One night Mom was so weak she couldn't talk. When she looked at me, it was like she was looking through and beyond me. She lifted both arms, as though reaching for something, and then reached for me. When I came to her, she took my hand and squeezed it softly. Her eyes opened wide. It was as though something was happening that only she could see.

"It's okay Mom. Let go of this body. There is help. You'll be okay." I said quietly. She continued looking upward, but became still. After some time I sat down and returned to a book I was reading.

Suddenly, I had a sense that something was behind me. At first I saw nothing, but the room seemed steamy or hazy. My peripheral vision caught what seemed was a large pulsating spot. In the center of the spot was a multipoint star-like pattern that glowed a red-orange, but faded to a creamy yellow at the edges. I turned to look at it and the light changed to a bright white figure or form that slowly faded away.

I could still see the figure even with my eyes closed as its presence was so pervading. I thought it was an angel or invisible helper. My mother still looking toward the ceiling, moaned softly. Her breathing gradually became very slow and the color left her face. The room became very still. My mother had transitioned.

Don Elwert is a member of the Detroit Branch.

By Robert Ellwood

Originally printed in the MARCH-APRIL 2007 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Ellwood, Robert. "Religion in the World Today." Quest  95.2 (MARCH-APRIL 2007): 53-56.

To begin with, consider the second object of the Theosophical Society: "To encourage the comparative study of religion, philosophy, and science." Comparative study ought to mean not only the timeless setting of the essences of religions alongside one another; it should also include perceiving how they stand in the world at any given point in time, including the present.

Even more importantly, comparative study relates directly to Theosophy's first object: "To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity." Brotherly and sisterly love requires deep understanding of the other. The old saying, "To understand all is to forgive all" may not be completely true, but surely profound comprehension of what a person's life has been like can go a long way in helping us move beyond indifference or antipathy. Shallow unconcern and heedless prejudice have long plagued the inter-religious world, and still do.

Our understanding must be accurate. Illusions, whether positive or negative, are of little help. Too often our views of other religions are simply projections of what we want to see in them and so are no more than subtle forms of egotism. It is easy to set the ideals of one religion against the actual practice of another, or to judge one by its best representatives and another by its worst.

We must also introduce the factor of time. Frequently differences within the same religion from one century to another have been nearly as pronounced as those between two different faiths. Sometimes it seems that the study of comparative religion ought to be particularly under the guidance of the Third Ray—said to be especially concerned with timing—as a way of understanding matters in terms of their particular moment in time. We need to look at the world's religions in terms of the vast sweep of evolution, which may require one aspect of spirituality, and then another, to sparkle most brilliantly in the sun.

Religions in the twenty-first century are significantly different than they were in the nineteenth, when the early Theosophists were writing about them, or even from what they were in the twentieth century. Likewise, after several wars and revolutions, and the phenomenon known as globalization, are the cultures, the nations, and the world, anything like what they were, although early Theosophy can certainly be regarded among the first intellectual and spiritual fruits of incipient globalization!

In this light, then, let us look at the specifics of world religion today, beginning with the most important fact: at the beginning of the twenty-first century, half the world's population of six billion belongs, at least in broad cultural terms, to two world faiths. Christianity claims two billion souls, and Islam, one billion or a little more. These, together with Judaism and its influence, constitute the three Abrahamic faiths (all claiming descent from the Patriarch Abraham's covenant with God), and at this moment the spotlight of history is upon them.

The Christian third of the world is in a remarkable position at present. Its numbers have more than doubled in only half a century, due partly to natural population increase and partly to rapid evangelization, especially in Africa and parts of Asia. There were those who thought that the demise of colonialism would spur the rejection of Christianity in favor of indigenous religions. Instead, although it was initially introduced by missionaries and closely identified with the imperial powers, Christianity has grown much more rapidly in Asia and Africa since independence, as though many peoples decided that once they could have the Europeans' faith without their governors or soldiers, they would take to it freely. Significantly, a great number of Christians in Asia and Africa belong to new, independent, Christian churches which are neither Catholic nor Protestant in a traditional sense, but deeply attuned to native culture.

Characteristically, they make far more use of drums and dancing than one would see in the average European or North American church. Emphasizing healing, exorcism of evil spirits, and ancestrism, these churches may be based on the teaching of an indigenous prophet. Through such prophets, who may be male or female, the voice of Christ and the Holy Spirit speaks anew, as fresh as on the day of Pentecost. The 2005 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches lists Independent churches in greater numbers than Protestant or Eastern Orthodox and ranking second only to Roman Catholic churches.

Christian growth has occurred also in traditionally Catholic Latin America. Rapid population growth, together with changing religious patterns induced by urbanization and an upsurge of Pentecostal and other evangelical Protestant movements, has revitalized both wings of Christianity. Latin America now has fresh importance to the Christian world overall.

What all this means is that the Christian center of gravity is moving to the southern hemisphere, to what is sometimes called the Third World. That shift is only abetted by Christianity's relative decline in its onetime heartland, Europe. Today the great churches and cathedrals of Europe are largely empty, as the population of Europe itself is declining, while Christian numbers are growing, sometimes explosively, elsewhere in the world. To see thronged places of worship and vital Christian faith, one must no longer go to London, Paris, or Rome, but to Nairobi, Seoul, or São Paulo.

While the number of active Christians in the United States remains impressive—some 230 million in 2005—they now represent only a little over ten percent of world Christianity and that percentage will decline as the twenty-first century advances. By 2025, half the world's Christians will live in Africa and Latin America; by 2050, only about one-fifth of the world's three billion Christians will be non-Hispanic whites, whether in Europe, North America, or anywhere else. Philip Jenkins, noting these religious-demographic projections, comments that "soon, the phrase "a White Christian" may sound like a curious oxymoron, as mildly surprising as'a Swedish Buddhist.' Such people can exist, but a slight eccentricity is implied" (3).

Third World Christianity, responding to current need, usually stresses the kind of sobriety and work ethic that help its members keep their bearings in a society changing from rural to urban. Otherwise, it reflects the traditional values as well as traditional ritual practices of the society. This has led to tension between First World and Third World branches of major denominations like the Anglican Church on such issues as the ordination of women and homosexuals, about which the First World is likely to be more liberal, and toleration of polygamy, of which the Third may be more accepting.

Christianity in these first years of the twenty-first century is more populous than ever, and embedded in a remarkable variety of cultures. At the same time, it is divided into many strands and divided on many issues, and its influence varies considerably from place to place. Still, history shows Christianity to be capable of astonishing surprises and adaptations. Only the future will show how many remain to be unveiled.

Islam, on the other hand, is shaped by outward confidence and a profound level of anxiety. It seems to me that Islam can be thought of as presently undergoing what Christianity underwent in the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, an era during which many of those previously mentioned surprises and new adaptations emerged. Today Islam is about 1500 years old; the same age Christianity was in the days of Luther and Calvin. In both cases, religion was emerging from near-medieval conditions into a modern world shaped by nationalism and technological revolutions. Social conditions were changing rapidly. Religion typically responds by embracing some novelties and rejecting others, trying to define itself sharply and to draw boundaries, while striving to return to its original sources—in this case, the Bible and the Qur'an—as it perceives them. At present, Islam, like sixteenth-century Christianity, is torn between adaptation or rejection of emerging secularism, whether in the physical and metaphorical form of Galileo's telescope or what is seen in the east today as western decadence.

In the Protestant case, rejection tended to come first, but liberalism and acceptance were also potential in the new form of Christianity and emerged in time along with conservatism. As with Islam today, the Reformation brought terrible violence, culminating in the Thirty-Years War, but the upheaval finally helped push Europe, and the world, into modernity.

Hinduism does not have the worldwide presence of either Islam or the new Christianity, although its direct and indirect influence may be found throughout the world. Vedanta philosophy, yoga classes, and the importance of Mohandas K. Gandhi in inspiring others like Martin Luther King, Jr. to nonviolent action, cannot be discounted. On the other hand, India, which is seventy-five percent Hindu, is expected to become the most populous nation in the world during the twenty-first century, assuring that the Hindu religion will certainly remain a major force.

Hinduism now seems to be torn between conservative and confrontational voices like those of the Bharat Janata Party, and the liberalism of such past exemplars as Swami Vivekananda, Gandhi, or India's philosopher-president Sarvepelli Radhakrishnan, and their contemporary representatives. This situation is characteristic of religions in countries undergoing rapid change and a new openness to the world, as India has been since major European contact. As the presence of India, and therefore Hinduism, grows in the world, their collective choices and influence will hold substantial significance for the globe.

What about Buddhism and the Chinese religions? Because of their great effective losses in China as a result of the Communist revolution, neither religion has the numbers, at least not on paper, that they had before 1949. But Buddhism retains some strength in Japan and in the Southeast Asian Theravada Buddhist countries, as well as in the West, where a number of spiritual seekers have discovered the Dharma.

The fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet (1935—), perhaps the most prominent world spiritual leader after the Pope, has brought Buddhism wide visibility and respect. But despite his role as a spokesperson for the oppressed Tibetan people, it cannot be said that Buddhism has the geopolitical significance of Christianity, Islam, or Hinduism. It remains to be seen whether that ancient pathway to Nirvana has permanently lost ground as an institutional religion or will be able to revitalize itself. Of course, Buddhism's historical and intellectual legacy will linger long, regardless of any outward decline, for nothing is deterministic. Will it find ways to keep its temples, monasteries, and lineages alive over some three millennia, despite the "decline of the Dharma" predicted by the Buddha himself? Could it undergo a new reformation reshaping Buddhism for a new kind of world? Perhaps that reformation would be centered in the West, where, according to many, the religion has more spiritual power, more creative and adaptive energies than in its ancient strongholds.

Less sanguine hopes can be raised for the Chinese religions, Confucianism and Taoism. A few Confucian temples and rites are nostalgically maintained in Korea and Taiwan. Taoism is more widespread, though it is very difficult to say by how much. In Taiwan, via the Chinese diaspora, and in the People's Republic of China, it is practiced very much as folk religion. There seems little hope, though, for large-scale institutional revitalization.

What is of greater interest is the continuing non-institutional influence of these traditions. Confucian values regarding family, work, the individual in relation to social order, and the state fundamentally continue to shape culture in China, Korea, and Japan whether under communist, corporate, or even Christian guise. One could almost say that Chinese Communism, with its mottos like "Serve the people," is Confucianism under another name; just as the Party cadres, or today's world-class Chinese entrepreneurs, are like the elite mandarins of old. Japan's hierarchical society and paternalistic corporations have presented almost a capitalist version of the same.

As for Taoism, it, too, seems to be perpetuated mainly in the form of attitudes perhaps not even consciously attributed to the religion. In fact, the case could be made that Taoism has really had more influence in America than any other eastern religion! Consider how many more martial arts studios there are than specifically Buddhist, Hindu, or Taoist temples; how many surfers wear the yin/yang symbol; how often people talk about the "Tao" of this or that, or "going with the flow". And consider how much cultural influence the Star Wars movies have had, their concept of "the Force" clearly based on the chi or ki of the martial arts—since fundamentally, despite Buddhist and Confucian influence, the martial arts are in the Taoist tradition. Perhaps this is the ultimate fate of religions after their final decline: to become ongoing sources of ethical and cultural values independent of any institutional structure, much as classical Greek and Roman religion markedly influenced the Renaissance, and continue to influence western culture even today.

What are appropriate responses of Theosophists to this world situation? First, a fluid spiritual picture gives us fresh opportunity to reaffirm the principle of spiritual evolution, to note how rapid changes in the religious world indicate a process emphasizing "now one aspect, now another." We can try to understand what it is about the present that has led those endeavoring to guide the world's spiritual evolution to showcase what seems now most prominent—while realizing that some features of it may be due to human recalcitrance rather than their plans—and at the same time to recognize that none of the pattern in this or any other age is absolute. This we can also teach others, and so promote a spirit of tolerance and loving understanding.

We can let that spirit of tolerance and love encourage respectful pluralism. Along with the rigid religious mentalities that, regrettably, are still all too much with us, pluralism and acceptance of pluralism are still a growing reality in the early twenty-first century. Even though many people are not yet ready to acknowledge this new reality openly, we can see widespread evidence that religions are regarded more and more as inner maps of Reality that we ourselves reverently configure. We see religion not so much as absolute, objective truth, but more like the famous Zen image of the finger pointing at the Moon. The finger is scripture and doctrine; look not at it, but in the direction it is pointing . . . to that which is beyond expression or containment in human words and concepts, but yet can be glimpsed from afar, even if through clouds and haze.

To be sure, some fingers may point in the right direction more accurately than others. Yet in a world of pointers, people change religions freely; in the increasing number of inter-religious marriages and families, they blend religions; they accept that in a world of many faiths, people need to get along with each other. I know of Christian-Jewish families who observe both Easter and Passover, and Christian-Buddhist families who display both the Cross and the image of the Enlightened One in their homes. Surely this is a step in the direction of the universal brotherhood of humanity of which Theosophy aspires to be a nucleus.

All this is in accord with very traditional Theosophical teachings about the beginning of a time of transition from the Fifth to the Sixth Root Race. The Secret Doctrine, describes the Root Races as stages of cultural and spiritual evolution. The stage in which we have abided for many centuries has been a time when humanity was meant to learn, above all and through experience, the meaning of dwelling in the physical body and in the physical world. It was thus a time of rich development in science and technology now abundantly realized. This era also called for the articulation of clear, objective laws of nature, absolutely essential for certain stages of scientific and technological understanding, but which we are now beginning to see as more relative than absolute. On the quantum level, probability theory works better than law; on the cosmological level, perhaps even more awesome Realities than any human concept can capture underlie multiverses infinite in all directions.

Unfortunately, the mode of thinking during that stage of human development, though now passing away, produced parallels to its kind of science in religion and other humanistic fields. Religions were often seen less as the finger pointing toward the ineffable than as closed systems possessing their own quasi-scientific sets of laws, dogmas, and proofs, which—being even less appropriate in faith than in the laboratory—served to divide and ensnare people as often as uniting and liberating them. The next stage is to be a step beyond this level, showing the real heart of religion to be love and personal quest beyond the closed systems. It will show the positive meaning of the many religions as vehicles for what the Buddhists call compassion and sympathetic joy. The coming era should be an exciting time for the enhancement of spiritual vision.

Perhaps then, we can view the spiritual tumult of the present as the beginning birth pangs of a new spiritual age. As in any such process, there will be resistance, setbacks, and times of discouragement. But our role as Theosophists must be to see and understand the big picture, and to support all our fellow human beings in the process of moving from one age into another.

 

 

VOLUME 95, NUMBER 2

CONTENTS

Living Waters
By Betty Bland

Humans, Apes, and the Felix Culpa
By John Algeo

The Dual Nature of Reality
By Richard Smoley

The Self, Science, and Religion
By Anna F. Lemkow

Religion in the World Today
Robert Ellwood

Guilt, Anger and the Human Condition
By Sam Menahem

Science and Theosophy: the Challenge of Unification Part 2
By Michael Levin

Saving Nature: In Praise of Frugality
By James L. Bull

Anna F. Lemkow

Originally printed in the MARCH-APRIL 2007 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Lemkow, Anna F. "The Self, Science, and Religion." Quest  95.2 (MARCH-APRIL 2007): 47-51.

What has become apparent to me is that much of the turmoil of the modern world arises from the bitter conflict between the two fields that have come to be known as modern science and religion and how they relate to Self. The bridging of these two great domains would be a boon for humanity and by the evidence shown, human consciousness is inexorably, if unevenly, evolving toward this sought after integration.

How We Define the Self

The common understanding in many fields of knowledge is that the nature of our Self is composite; that is, the different constituents of our makeup correspond with and serve as our means of contact with different levels of reality.

Huston Smith, renowned explorer of comparative religion, displays in his book, Why Religion Matters, an extraordinary mandala that depicts this universal vision of the relationship between reality and selfhood. Smith's mandala includes all the major religious traditions: namely, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and the Chinese complex of religions. The mandala indicates the four major levels of reality and the corresponding four levels of selfhood for each of them. In Christianity, the four levels of selfhood—body, mind, soul, and spirit—are correlated with nature, angels or demons, Christ, and Godhead, respectively. Hinduism, to take another example, posits the gross body, the subtle body, the causal body, and atma or turiya which correspond respectively to prakriti, deva lokas, Saguna Brahman (God attributes) and Nirguna Brahman (ultimate infinite, formless, Godhead)—the latter two levels of deity reflect the exoteric and the esoteric stream, respectively, found in each world religion.

Concerning the nature of reality, Smith points out that its "domains are not identical in worth. . . Being infinite, the Godhead is more complete than God . . . who in turn is more important than [this world] " (225). The mandala accords, not surprisingly, with the millennial idea of the Great Chain of Being—the idea that reality is a hierarchy of interwoven levels of consciousness reaching from matter to body to mind to soul to the ultimate divine source.

The Anatman or no-self doctrine of Buddhism is illuminating. What it maintains is that the small or personal ego is impermanent—that it has no abiding reality—that it is empty of any self-nature. John Engler, who is a Buddhist and a trained psychologist, states in Paths Beyond Ego that: "in both psychologies the sense of being the same "self" in time, in place, and across states of consciousness is conceived as something that is not innate in personality, not inherent but that evolves developmentally. . . [It] is actually an internalized image, a composite representation, constructed by a selective and imaginative 'remembering' of past encounters with the object world. . . [it] is viewed as being constructed anew from moment to moment" (118).

Mahayana Buddhism, unlike Theravada Buddhism, while similarly denying the small ego, strongly affirms that a true self is discoverable, though only after a prolonged and painful inner search. Robert Thurman of Columbia University (who studied Tibetan Buddhism with the Dalai Lama) describes the discovery as liberating. It liberates one from the need to shore up the small ego, the false entity and its false pretensions, and from the need to be somebody instead of just being. Thurman characterizes the true self as boundless and intimately connected to the entire universe.

Lama Anagarika Govinda, a gifted expositor of Tibetan mysticism, stated in Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness: "When the Buddha put the annata-idea in the center of his teaching he took the decisive step from a static to a dynamic view of the world, from an emphasis on "being" to an emphasis on "becoming," from the concept of an unchangeable, permanent "I" (ego) to the realization of the interdependence of all forms and aspects of life and the capacity of the individual to grow beyond himself and his self-created limitations" (6).

Interestingly, both Buddhism and contemporary psychoanalysis study the self but they study two different levels of the self. The goal of both is the easing of human suffering, yet for Buddhism this goal is radical transformation of consciousness, while for psychoanalysis the aim is to eliminate neurotic suffering that may and often stems from early childhood traumas and distortions. Each system duly has its own method. Buddhism advocates meditative practice, while psychoanalysis tries to strengthen the ego. (Paradoxically, the personal ego—that dubious or false entity—must nevertheless be strengthened before it is reduced to size.) The two systems are complementary.

Buddhist Theosophist, Christmas Humphreys distinguishes three main levels of selfhood in Studies in the Middle Way: Atma—the SELF—which shines on all and is the property of no one; the Self, which moves from life to life—a continuous, complex, changing flow—"a becoming, a ceaseless growth, an endless process of becoming what it really is" (47), and the self, the personality which "acquires experience through the five senses and the mind, and therefore provides a workshop for the growth of character" (46). The acquired experience is absorbed by the Self and is then stored in memory. Another way this configuration has been interpreted is thus: the SELF is both the (causal) top rung of the ladder in the spectrum of consciousness and that of which all the rungs are constituted.

H. P. Blavatsky remarked in The Key to Theosophy that the SELF or Higher Self, as she called it, can never be objective for it is Atma, which is really Brahma, the Absolute, and is indistinguishable from it. Blavatsky refers to it at times as "the God within us," and as "our Father in Secret." She also borrows the term "oversoul" from the great American transcendentalist philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson. It occurs, notably, in the Proem to The Secret Doctrine: "The Secret Doctrine teaches...The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Oversoul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root. . . " (13).

Ken Wilber writes in his book Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution: "In philosophy a general distinction is made between the empirical ego, which is the self insofar as it can be an object of awareness and introspection, and the Pure Ego or transcendental Ego which is pure subjectivity (or the observing Self), which can never be seen as an object of any sort. In this regard, the pure Ego is virtually identical with what the Hindus call Atman or the pure Witness that itself is never witnessed—is never an object—but contains all objects in itself" (227).

Psychologies of East and West allude to the process of decentering from the empirical ego. Wilber, a Zen Buddhist, remarks that the more we decenter from that ego, the closer we approach "an intuition of the very Divine as one's very Self . . . . The completely decentered self is the all-embracing Self (as Zen would say, the Self that is no-self)" (231).

Some of us today have begun to de-center from the personal self or the small ego to some degree. When we stand back and look at ourselves somewhat objectively—we notice negative emotions and obsessive concern with ourselves—i.e., we begin to notice a kind of I/me divide.

A related perception that some of us have is that one's truer identity, whatever it is, is scarcely captured in any conventional way, e.g., by such data as place and religion of birth, skin color, sex, address, occupation, affiliations, and any other personal attributes. Using myself as an example, I am white, female, of Russian-Jewish extraction, a United States/Canadian citizen, a planetary citizen, a life member of the Theosophical Society, but I often feel that I am somehow different from and also more than the sum of these personal attributes.

It is not, I believe, that our personal particulars are insignificant. On the contrary, they are potent and dynamic. They are the rich soil of our present incarnations. Moreover, it is the unique combination of personal attributes that makes each individual unique. No one could be mistaken for someone else no matter how much change they undergo in body and mind during the course of a lifetime. And yet, none of one's personal attributes are absolute.

Significantly innumerable individuals across time and culture have reported having a spontaneous glimpse of a Self totally unrelated to their biographical history. I have experienced such a glimpse at least once; I felt a oneness with everything and everyone, a blissful sense of total self-acceptance as well as an acceptance and love of everyone else. I wish to not forget this peak experience because it is an illuminating peek at my true nature.

Modern Rationalism: The Self Dumbed Down

We know that evolution is an incontrovertible fact; even just how it happened and how it proceeds are a matter of controversy. Its course appears unpredictable. Take what happened to the notion of Self in recent centuries by a passage from The Passion of the Western Mind by the historian Richard Tarnas:

Science replaced religion as preeminent intellectual authority, as definer, judge, and guardian of the cultural world view. Human reason and empirical observation replaced theological doctrine and scriptural revelation as the principal means for comprehending the universe. Conceptions involving a transcendent reality were increasingly regarded as beyond the competence of human knowledge. While modern rationalism suggested and eventually affirmed and based itself upon the conception of man as the highest or ultimate intelligence, modem empiricism did the same for the conception of the material world as the essential or only reality—i.e. secular humanism and scientific materialism, respectively. (286)

The advent of modern science was a watershed in human history that ushered in a wealth of new truths and discoveries. In its wake, the self-evolution of consciousness paradoxically seemed to take a regressive turn—i.e., obscuration, at least for many and for the time being, of the transrational (transpersonal, contemplative, mystical) levels of consciousness.

Scientific materialism states that matter-energy is the only reality, that only matter exists and that consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon that somehow issues from the physical brain. If there were no brain, the argument goes, there would be no such thing as sentience or consciousness. Scientific materialism is still the official view of modern science, notwithstanding that it is scientifically obsolete. It was, in effect, refuted as early as the twentieth century upon the discovery of the dynamic nature of matter, whereupon the cosmos ceased to look like a dead machine and began to look instead like a great thought or like mindstuff. Science could no longer claim to know matter. The mystery has deepened—even a subatomic particle can display instant correlation or synchronization of events over long distances; the finding known as non-locality.

Yet self-evolution continues. At the frontiers of science, theorists are vigorously searching for unified theories—in all disciplines. There are some theories that promise or claim to unify matter, life, and mind. But the materialistic/mechanistic view remains entrenched among many conventional scientists and other mechanistically-minded thinkers.

In a recent article on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, Daniel C. Dennett, the well-known American philosopher, argues passionately that while nature displays "breathtakingly ingenious designs," these have all, including the development of the eye, been generated by processes that are themselves without purpose and without intelligence. The long-inculcated mechanistic/materialistic view, with its disavowal of purpose in nature, can apparently produce downright irrationality even in some philosophers although it is only rational to see machines as devoid of rationality! Nature in fact displays countless and remarkable examples of purpose and a number of examples are cited in my book, The Wholeness Principle: Dynamics of Unity within Science.

A widely influential "ism" related to empirical science that scientists do not necessarily claim is scientism. Scientism holds that what science does not discover is not true. As Huston Smith remarks in The Way Things Are, this stance "reduces the stature of the human self. The highest reaches of humanity are beheaded, you might say, by a single stroke of the scientistic sword" (270). Smith calls scientism "tunnel vision." He documents its pervasiveness in academia. Wilber often expatiates on what he calls flatland (reflecting the absence of the vertical dimension of consciousness). Plato's metaphor, remember, was the cave.

Another "ism" we can look at is secular humanism. According to Frederick Edwords of the American Humanist Association, in his article "What Is Humanism?" there are many types of humanism, including cultural, secular, and religious humanism. All types of humanism place reliance alone on "human means for comprehending reality . . . [making] no claims to possess or have access to supposed transcendent knowledge." Religious humanism, states Edwords, regards religion as "functional," (i.e., pragmatic)—it "serves the personal and social needs of a group of people sharing the same philosophical world view." "Secular and Religious humanists both share the same worldview and the same basic principles." Edwords quotes the definition of modern humanism of Corliss Lamont, its chief proponent: "a naturalistic philosophy that rejects all supernaturalism and relies primarily upon reason and science, democracy and human compassion."

While secular humanism is greatly superior to pure mechanism, some strains of it lack awareness of the Self and its incomparably richer transrational experience. Yet, secular humanists or modern rationalists seem to constitute the major segment of the population of the Western world. Many scientists fall into this category, as do many academicians, and liberals.

Another prominent "ism" of our time is of course religious fundamentalism. Islamic fundamentalism is resurging strongly just now. Common to religious fundamentalists, whether Judaic, Christian, or Muslim, is the proclivity to stigmatize their opponents by labeling them as apostates from the one true way. In reality, this deeply polarizing phenomenon often represents tribal strife over material resources and power rather than over religion. (Is loving to hate others for the love of God consistent with religion?) On the other hand, scholars point out that fundamentalism is the very opposite pole of secularism, and that these two prominent "isms" trace back to the rise of modern science (which would accord with the view of Tarnas).

Smith, in The Way Things Are elucidates: "Fundamentalists see their traditional values threatened by scientistic, humanistic secularism. Of course their ways of reacting can be very unbecoming and very scary . . . [Yet] the climate of modernity and post modernity is excessively naturalistic and scientistic, and liberal intellectuals have played a part in making it so" (158).

Trans-rationalism or the Higher Reaches of Self

Wilber remarks in his book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, "The capacity to go within and look at rationality results in going beyond rationality... If you are aware of being rational, what is the nature of the awareness, since it is now bigger than rationality?" (258). He points out that all of the contemplative traditions start with reason—with the notion that truth is established by evidence, by experience—but "their teachings, and their contemplative endeavors, were (and are) transrational through and through." They all claim "that there exist higher domains of awareness, embrace, love, identity, reality, self, and truth." These are not dogmas but conclusions "based on hundreds of years of experimental introspection and communal verification" (265).

Reason is a marvelous and indispensable faculty. Together with experiment, it is indispensable for modern science. It is the mode for philosophical discourse. But while reason is the faculty we use for discussing truth, goodness, beauty, love, and compassion, it alone cannot make them realities in our life. It is an indispensable but limited faculty. We do not love our child, our lover, or a friend because it is reasonable to do so. Reason alone can neither produce a great work of art nor understand unity with others beyond all differences.

Toward the Integration of Western Science and Non-Institutional Religion

In his Lowell lectures of 1925, Alfred North Whitehead said, "When we consider what religion is for mankind, and what science is, it is no exaggeration to say that the future course of history depends upon the decision of this generation as to the relations between them" (181-182).

Half a century earlier, Blavatsky raised the same issue. As is evident in both The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled, she undertook the formidable task of demonstrating the intercompatibility and complimentary relationship of the world religious traditions themselves and the harmony in principle of (non-institutional or mystical) religion and modern science. The subtitle of Blavatsky's masterwork, The Secret Doctrine, is "The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy."

Happily, modern science has been wonderfully harmonizing itself over the past many decades with spiritual principles—unintentionally, of course. This is most evident perhaps on the frontiers of science, as distinct from its mainline or Darwinist theory of evolution. The newer theory depicts evolution as a dynamic whole-making process that generates a continuum of wholes-within-greater wholes—in the parlance of science, holons-within-holons. (A holon is an entity that is both a whole and a part of a greater whole; in fact we know of no whole that is not also a part of a greater whole.) These theorists see the myriad holons as self-organizing, self-differentiating, and self-evolving.

With these insights, the word "self" assumes a wonderful new status that reflects the evolution of empirical science beyond materialism and mechanism—beyond the still-reigning scientific worldview of the primacy of matter. This theory sees evolution as a living, dynamic, process wherein the myriad selves (wholes/parts) self-differentiate only to self-transcend for the sake of the next higher—more embracing—holon-in-the-making. As Arthur Koestler, who introduced the word holon, once remarked that unity seemed to be achieved by a detour through diversity. Each emergent level transcends but includes the previous level. These are successive stages of the evolution of consciousness along the hierarchical, universal spectrum of consciousness. All holons, all existents, in effect, participate in a co-creative learning process—all, even molecules, atoms, and elementary particles, seem to have, to some level of evolution, a mind of their own; nothing is divorced from consciousness.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

In The Spectrum of Consciousness, Wilber defines evolution as "the movement of Spirit, toward Spirit, as Spirit, the conscious resurrection, in all men and women, of the Supreme Identity, an Identity present all along, but an Identity seemingly obscured by manifestation, seemingly obscured by the limited view from a lower rung on the ladder" (xvii).

Blavatsky described evolution as proceeding "from within without." Regrettably, Wilber never alludes to Blavatsky but he characterizes evolution similarly as a process of "within-and-beyond"—it "brings new withins and new beyonds." It is integral, we see, to the afore-mentioned "decentering" process. In Theosophy, and similarly in the integral worldview of Wilbur, the "within" reflects the postulate of involution as the necessary precedent to evolution. By contrast, science does not claim to know what preceded the Big Bang. It speaks in the language of theories, not in terms of transcendent reality. The process of evolution from the standpoint of science is in effect a process of the more coming from the less whereas in Theosophy or perennial philosophy the less comes from the more.

Mechanistic/materialistic thought dies hard, but modern science at its frontiers has outgrown mechanism/materialism. Leading integral thinkers are at one in discerning significant signs of a unitive movement in thought—an evolution toward the reconciliation of modern science and authentic or mystical religion—a kind of spiritual renaissance. Think of the dozens of comparative/integrative books, especially books on bridging science and religion, including many best sellers, which have been published in the past half-century.

Concerned integral thinkers often employ the phrase integrating science and religion. This may seem puzzling; after all, these are two very different pursuits employing two very different methodologies. Ravi Ravindra, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion and Adjunct Professor of Physics at Dalhousie University, Canada—and also a theosophist—explains in Science and the Sacred that what is meant is a harmonization of the scientific and religious aspirations in the soul—the Self, we might say—of one and the same person. For Ravindra there is an essential complement between a great scientist and a great spiritual aspirant: "The spiritual aspirant's concern to know the self—both the ordinary self and the non-personal Self of all that exists—and the scientist's concern to know the world" are mutually supportive and complementary.

Ravindra also remarks: "... all spiritual traditions assert that there are many levels of being and consciousness within a person as well as in the cosmos, and that the highest can be experienced only in the deepest part of the soul. Also, all the traditions say that there is something, variously called Spirit or God or Allah or Brahman, which is above the mind. It cannot be comprehended by the ordinary mind but can be experienced by human beings whose consciousness has been radically transformed. . . In this traditional perspective, science needs to serve the Spirit; otherwise it ends up serving, almost by default, the natural human tendency towards self-centeredness, resulting in violence against and exploitation of other humans, cultures, other creatures and the Earth" (114-115).