Ways of Knowing: Science and Mysticism Today

Draft Introductory Chapter by Chris Clarke

What does it mean, to know? Consider these quotations …

My mother would get up early. She would go outside and stand there a long time. Then she would say, “Vehsih yehno nah ha ooh.” That means. “The caribou are just under the mountains over there, and they’re coming.” Everyone would get excited.               (Norma Kassi)[1]

Not only do we know more about the universe, but our understanding is deeper, and the questions that we are asking are more profound. Still, our understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe has not yet caught up with what we know about it.                      (Wendy L. Freedman )[2]

Then in the distance I began to see … the physical cosmos and the underlying constitutive forces that built the universe and sustain it. … I learned by becoming what I was knowing. I discovered the universe not by knowing it from the outside but by tuning to that level in my being where I was that thing.
                                                            (Chris Bache)[3]

The sapiential perspective envisages the role of knowledge as the means of deliverance and freedom, of what the Hindu calls moksa. To know is to be delivered.                                         (Seyyed Hossein Nasr)[4]

These are about very remarkable, and very different, ways of knowing. They seem to go beyond the knowing of our more ordinary life, which is concerned with familiarity with people and places, the ingrained ability to perform various tasks, or our accumulated learning about the consequences of our actions. The wisdom of Norma Kassi’s mother, an elder of Gwich’in Nation, of Yukon, is intensely practical and born of a lifetime of living close to nature. The knowledge of the cosmologist Wendy Freeman is derived from measurements from satellite observatories orbiting the earth, coupled with the full intellectual apparatus of modern theoretical physics; it is vast but seemingly remote from our lives. The vision of Chris Bache, seen in the trance of a psychedelic state of consciousness, claims to deliver similar cosmological information, but through direct awareness with no instrument other than the body-mind. And the knowledge dealt with by Sayed Hussein Nasr, knowledge of the ultimate nature of all existence, is attained through the long refinement of consciousness taught in traditional meditative spiritual paths. 

Is it right to call all these “knowing,” as if it were a question of a single human activity applied to different areas; or are they so different that it is misleading to use the same word for all of them? Do they fundamentally differ from the more pedestrian knowings of everyday life, or is it more a matter of degree? What do we mean when we assess the particular claims of each as “right” or “wrong”?

For over a thousand years, and in many cultures, attempts have been made to answer these questions by appeal to a hierarchy of ways of knowing – an ascending chain of types of knowledge, each superior to the one below. At different times, science or religion have each claimed the pinnacle of knowing, the knowing at the top of hierarchy in terms of which everything else, whether theoretical or practical, could be derived. A famous modern examples of this on the scientific side is Francis Crick’s Astonishing Hypothesis that the whole of life and mind can be explained in terms of biochemistry and the interactions of neurons. While on the other side some would cite Ken Wilber’s collection of writings[5] which gives a pinnacle place to the sort of spiritual knowing being described by Nasr. Both these examples have come in for trenchant criticism, as well as enthusiastic praise, so that it now seems necessary to explore ways of knowing in which there is no boss-knowledge, no supreme ruler at the pinnacle.

Our aim in this book, therefore, is to consider the possibility that many ways of knowing need to be recognised alongside each other, without a hierarchical structure of superiority one to another, to examine different ways in which this can be so, and explore the consequences of this for how we might live our lives. In the following sections I shall sketch some of the key ideas that will be addressed from different perspectives.

There is a need to proceed both boldly and skilfully. Within systems that have an order of superiority between knowings there is vital distinction between those where the higher ways negate and replace the lower, and those where the higher ways incorporate and then go beyond the lower; a distinction between the malevolent true hierarchies and the benevolent holarchies, as Wilber terms his own system of levels that incorporate the lower ones. Boldness is needed in order to expose the injustices that have been perpetrated by the dogmatic wielding of hierarchical power. Skill is needed to understand the gradations of benign and malevolent versions, and be always alert to the tendencies of benignly inclusive schemes to slide over into the camp of their authoritarian hierarchical cousins.

The Social Context

Examining different ways of knowing does not stay innocuously within philosophy, but takes us straight into politics. Those who have developed critiques of a hierarchical approach have drawn attention to the way in which a hierarchy of ways of knowing tends to be connected with a hierarchy of political power among classes of a society. The higher ways of knowing are acquired by longer study, and so accessible only to those with the economic resources needed for leisure. Superior knowledge would then become the prerogative of an educated rich elite, as exemplified by parts of  the Christian Church at many points of its history. In the Middle Ages both economic power and intellectual power thus becomes concentrated with a ruling elite, with a double temptation to oppression and corruption. Challenging this power structure requires both intellectual and material resources, as illustrated by the historical battles between the Church and the increasingly dominant secular and mercantile powers, which were marked by intellectual battles as to who laid claim to the most superior knowledge, battles in which science often gained the upper hand over religion. 

In the case of the power struggle between Church and mercantile science, the more diplomatic thinkers on both sides progressively developed an agenda of regarding the scientific and revelatory ways of knowing as complementary, having validity in different domains. A conception of parallel knowledge systems led to a division of the intellectual territory, although increasingly large tracts of it were successively ceded by the church in strategic withdrawals from the attacks of Copernicus moving the earth from the centre of the universe, Darwin viewing humanity as one species among many, Freud revealing our dependency on unconscious forces and Hawking making Creation a part of physics. It seemed as though this mutual toleration between religion and science, keeping to different domains, established a happy alternative to a hierarchical structure of knowledge. In recent years, however, feminist thinkers[6] have realised that while these men of science and men of the church negotiated their alliances of power, the “lower” ways of knowing continued , but in forms that were increasingly suppressed, hidden and forgotten. Below the parallel rulers of the power hierarchy there persisted what Foucault[7] termed “subjugated ways of knowing”, including the practical and spiritual knowing of women, until quite recently handed down orally and unrecorded in the histories written by men. The knowledge hierarchy was identified as a patriarchy, and it became clear that the collision between the subjugated women’s knowing and the patriarchal/hierarchical knowing of the church had resulted in the witch trials that culminated in the sixteenth century. This was the most malevolent of all hierarchies.

From this perspective, it became clear that there was in fact nothing “lower” about the subjugated ways. Their contribution to human well being, individual and social, it was suggested, was even greater than that of the dominant ways. And a similar pattern was played out in the case of the indigenous peoples of North America, Australia and the other lands that were conquered by the dominant power of the West, and whose cultures then contributed to the hidden wealth of the subjugated ways of knowing. Thus the study of the role of hierarchy in ways of knowing has become a means of liberating the oppressed.

In this volume June Boyce-Tilman explores this approach by examining ways of knowing that have not been validated by the dominant culture. She looks at the need for balance, within the self and within the wider society, between the valuing of such areas as process/product, challenge/nurture, the individual/the community and the embodied/the disembodied.  She then shows how particular dominant value systems pushed to extremes turn sour but how in right relationship with those value systems which are subjugated they retain their integrity.  The chapter looks towards a genuinely inclusive society in which various ways of knowing are valued.

This theme of validating subjugated ways of knowing is then linked by John Holt to the spiritual path of creativity, and in particular artistic creativity. This echoes Matthew Fox’s “Creation Centered Spirituality” in which “every mystic is an artist and every true artist is a mystic.”[8] He explains from his experience in working with indigenous peoples and with the most marginalised of our culture, the “unforgiven” in our secure mental hospitals, how creativity has a natural tendency towards a heightened sense of self-realisation in the individual, constituting a process of clarification of the relationship between self and the world – self and body, self and environment, self and God etc.

Jennifer Elam then takes the discussion into a wider context by exploring the way in which repression has grown within our societies as a result of the partition of knowing between a science and an institutionalised religion which both cut out the Spirit. Labelling those who are open to Spirit as “abnormal” has created a greater realm of deviance; pathology and criminality increases as our tolerance and acceptance of differences decreases. She explores how the valuing of mystical experience as a way of knowing can shift reality in major ways. That of the Universal within each person connects with the larger Reality of which we are all a part. No longer can the profit motive be the bottom line. No longer does reality lie in the shadow world of changing appearances but in the seeking of eternal truths. The valuing of diversity, reflection and personal stories can have major impact on psychology and education. Connection with the Creation Spirit (creativity in a broad sense) serves as the bridge between individuals and the divine/universal/God; a language is provided. War becomes less possible. The profit motive must bow down and take its rightful place.

Ways of knowing: the view from the inside

While the breadth and coherence of the vision just presented is a product of our times, readers will recognise elements of it from the teachings of spiritual and social visionaries over the past two millennia. We often feel despair that apparently little of this teaching has taken root, and wonder if there is a fundamental reason, something basic to the make-up the human being, for why humanity seems so impervious to what many regard as the obvious. To address this, we need to examine the knower, the nature of the human person.

In his chapter, the neuropsychologist Douglas Watt focuses on the central role of our emotions. For much of the human race through much of our history, fear and/or rage have grabbed the cognitive and emotional workspaces making spiritual learning something of a luxury; and when spiritual teaching has received attention, our emotional makeup has distorted it into the structures of religion, in the West usually based on an anthropomorphic concept of God. The driving forces for both religion and mysticism, he argues, are our underlying attachment mechanisms. Attachment is seen as a biological mandate for hominid brains, the source of our deepest comforts and joys, and the loss of which drives our deepest pains and sorrows. Reverence and awe, as a finite if powerful hominid brain confronts an infinite natural world, are argued to be the affective core of spirituality.  Those deeply interested in spiritual perspectives have throughout the ages been often torn between deep hope and equally deep worry.  This perhaps has never been more true, given that we are now perched on a precipice of an unprecedented ecological disaster reflective of the deep failure of traditional faiths in a technological age in which nature is seen as an “object” to be manipulated and mastered instead of “the ground of being”.

The consequence of this is a frightening rate of increasing ex-speciation and impending loss of vast biological diversity, driven in part, Watt argues, by harsh in group/out group distinctions that human beings seem to excel at, a tendency mirrored in and reinforced by religious “sect-ism”.  Deeper appreciation for the underlying affective themes in religious searching, as distinct from the current much more divisive focus on the cognitive forms, is seen as one potential antidote, and in taking this way forward, a science that is revealing the world in terms of a hierarchy of emergent properties can unite with a spirituality freed from Anthropomorphic notions of God.

Many approaches to the human predicament see us as composed of conflicting parts. Indeed, any scheme involving different ways of knowing naturally suggests a division of the human being into different parts, or at least different faculties, corresponding to these different ways. Plato stands out as an expositor, with his graphic depictions in the Republic and the Phaedrus of the division of the human into body and soul, as separable components. There is also a tradition of the parts of the human fitting badly together, or being at odds with each other. St. Paul was famously frustrated by the way that “the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do … I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind[9]”.

Isabel Clarke, a clinical psychologist, uses  this concept of misfitting parts to offer a complementary approach to that of Watt. Like him, she stresses the vital role of emotional and sensual components of the mind of the human being, while also drawing on research into memory and information processing. She sees the functional separation of the two principal components of the mind as like a gulf in our inner landscape. One side is represented by the mystical quality of experience which is the subject of much of this volume. The other side is represented by our rational faculties, so that the more familiar quality of everyday experience manifests when the two sides of the gulf are well connected. These two ways of operating give us the basis for two ways of knowing: one cool, analytical and logical in the conventional sense; and the other which is wonderful, paradoxical, relational and without clear boundaries. In the terminology of the “interacting cognitive subsystems” (ICS) model of Teasdale and Barnard, these two are based the propositional  and the implicational subsystems.

Our society tries to ignore the implicationally based way of knowing in its elevation of mechanistic science and technology, or to harness it to the needs of the market by introducing it into the imagery of advertising. and alcohol. But this way of knowing knows no such restraints.  It seeps back in fundamentalism, drugs and cults if it is not embraced in more wholesome ways.

This model of a twofold mind, with a strong connectivity between the two components, sheds light on many of the issues raised here. It gives, for example,  an extra dimension to the cultural history of the domination of feminine ways of knowing by patriarchal ways of knowing. This can now be seen as one of progressive political domination by an emphasis on the propositional subsystem, with its attendant tendency to separate from and control the environment, to the detriment of mysticism in religion and of indigenous and feminine spirituality in society, with their tendency to strive for deeper connections with the environment, and a more internalised understanding of it.

It cannot be stressed too much that, because all our meaning-making flows through these two subsystems, they determine our universe, in so far as it is knowable by any form of thought.[10] We are thus dealing with a much more fundamental level than, say, the more publicised “right-brain/left-brain” division[11], which refers to different balances of ability in handling the (given) universe.

A different way of looking at the mind, while being explicitly related to the ICS model, is described by  Lyn Andrews, based on the personal perspective of her own spontaneous mystical experiences, and their background. She argues that mysticism is related to increasing self awareness and subtle changes in consciousness, which together, might be partly or wholly responsible for the different ways of knowing, and thus paradox. Her approach is distinctive for the way in which her experience gives her a way of integrating many of the aspects of science and mystical insight that are described here into a greater whole in which many of the paradoxes are understood to be the creative, integrative nature of reality.

Beyond absolute realism

The move to a recognition of ways of knowing that are alternative to any sort of  hierarchical model poses a challenge to our logical construction of the world. Science, in particular, is used to the idea of a hierarchical sequence of steadily more inclusive theories, each one containing the previous as an approximation or special case, with the whole system conforming to a consistent classical logic. In Wilber’s core holarchy[12] the bodily level is pre-logical, the intellectual level logical, and the spiritual level beyond all logic; so that the scheme is clearly situated in relation to classical logic. What, however, are we to make of a division of ways of knowing that situates different ways alongside each other, rather than having each one superseding the previous ones?

The co-existence of different ways of knowing that appear, on conventional (hierarchical) ways of thinking, to be inconsistent, suggests that we are somehow suspending the normal laws of contradiction. Rather that seeing the different views as exclusive alternatives, either of which might hold but not both, we are being enjoined to consider that both one alternative and the other are in some way valid. The phrase “both/and thinking” has gained currency as a loose way of characterising this. Such a move cuts across the whole tenor of Western (and much non-Western) philosophy, which has been motivated by the quest for a method leading to comprehensive and exclusive truth. So how are we to judge the truth of different and apparently incompatible ways of knowing? What, indeed is meant by “truth” in this situation?

The idea that truth is absolute has dominated philosophy in the West until recently.[13] This has been the case both for realists (and quasi-realists[14]), associated with the name of Descartes, for whom truth lies in correspondence with a given external reality; and for idealists (associated with the name of Kant) for whom truth lies in the a priori preconditions of our own thinking – but for both truth is absolute, because both assume a sharp dichotomy between the internal and the external world, and both rely on classical logical processes. The idea of alternative ways of knowing based on alternative ways of thinking entirely undermines this conception of exclusive truth.

One response to this undermining of classical truth has been the post-modern project of grounding knowing in particular cultural and political contexts[15]. This has been a vital contribution, but there has remained a gap to be filled. While many writers[16] have affirmed a distinction between post-modernism and pure relativism (the total absence of any concept of truth), the precise logical relation between the two and their relation to a belief in absolute reality has remained elusive.

Two developments have clarified this enormously. One is the work by Jorge Ferrer[17] showing that both contextualism (in its post-modern sense) and absolute realism depend on the basic splitting of the world into “subjective” and “objective.” Thus it is this split which must be transcended if we are to understand knowing in a non-hierarchical way. His contribution in this volume shows how we can replace this Cartesian/Kantian split by an understanding of ourselves and the world in terms of participation. In this picture, drawn from a strand of philosophy that started with the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, a spiritual occurrence is not a private experience of the world, but the enactment of a participatory event that can involve the creative power of all dimensions of the person: body, vital energy, heart, mind, and soul. 

The second development, from within science, is the emergence of a new sort of logic in which recognises the existence of different contexts but brings them all within a single non-classical way of handling the process of logical deduction. In this sense, the logic itself is context-dependent. These logics were formulated independently as quantum logic in physics and as bilogic[18] in analytical psychology. Whereas the rise of consciousness studies as a scientific discipline legitimised studying subjective states alongside objective one, this development allows us to see the richness of alternatives that transcend the subjective/objective split.

The central role of bilogic in the conceptualisation of mystical experience.has been described in pioneering work by Rodney Bomford[19]. In his chapter in this volume he describes its origin in the work of the psycho-analyst Ignacio Matte Blanco, who introduced the concept of two logics in the human mind. Of these, one is the classical logic prevalent in conscious thinking, the other is the logic of the unconscious which is often in contradiction to the first logic. Matte Blanco called this symmetric logic. The co-existence of the two logics explains many anomalies in human thinking, particularly when it is influenced by the emotions. In the depth of the unconscious symmetric logic is paramount and the thinking – or absence of it – that results is closely parallel to the writings of some mystical theologians, particularly those in the neo-Platonic tradition.

Matte Blanco was deeply interested in the work of Nicolas of Cusa and Bomford relates his concept of God as both the Absolute Maximum and Absolute Minimum to symmetric logic, and arrives at a concept of God seen both as the nothingness at the depth of the Unconscious and also as the whole universe when seen from the perspective of symmetric logic – God as Nothing and God as All things.

In a later chapter I describe how the mathematics of topos theory gives a precise logical framework for context dependent logic that unites the bilogic of analytical psychology with modern quantum logic, and I argue that this form of logic is the form that describes the operations of the implicational subsystem, and hence many types of mystical experience. The links that we have established between the implicational subsystem, mystical experience and context dependent logic now bring mysticism into a full dialogue with the scientific approach to the world.

The nature of the spiritual path

The mystical knowing of Nicholas of Cusa is firmly rooted in a rich faith tradition (in its time a dominant way of knowing) and a highly developed practice. The question for many people in today’s more pluralistic world is, how far are these “classical” mystical knowings purely a product of particular traditions, and how far do they represent a fundamental capacity of the human being to extend their awareness, or to have their awareness extended, into a wider universe than usual? The two chapters by Lyn Andrews and Jennifer Elam (discussed above) present evidence for the idea that the extension of awareness is fundamental, though it can be shaped by a faith tradition.

While my discussion so far has been largely Western in orientation, many would argue that it is in non-Western cultures that the paradoxes just described has been best discussed and used as a spiritual path. To cite only one example, in Buddhism the early writer Nagarjuna did not “deal with dualities by attempting to arrive at a compromise between the two sides or by formulating a position that lies between the two. Rather, it attempts to supersede the sphere of conceptual thinking and its attendant dualistic modes.”[20] This applies particularly to his teaching on emptiness which interestingly parallels Bomford’s conception of God and Nothing and All Things. In related teachings such as the Diamond Sutra this approach also leads to teachings whose paradoxicality is reminiscent of those of Nicholas of Cusa. “For example, the Buddha is made to say: ‘As many beings as there are in the universe of beings, …all these I must lead to nirvana, into that realm of nirvana which leaves nothing behind. And yet, although innumerable beings have thus been led to nirvana, no being at all has been led to nirvana.’ (ibid, p 121)” Similar approaches to the transcending of dualism are familiar in Hinduism.

Examples like this, while offering convincing alternatives to those derived from the Western traditions, all illustrate the transcending of all logical structures, rather than a generalisation of logical structures, and for this reason they are hard to connect with Western scientific ways of thinking. In order to make such a connection, particular interest attaches to Middle Eastern mysticism, which can be conceptually as well as geographically intermediate between West and East. In his chapter on Middle Eastern spirituality, Neil Douglas-Klotz examines the need for new ways of knowing that are called for when we try to understand and/or evaluate spiritual experiences in the Bible as well as other Middle Eastern spiritual traditions. He draws on the psycholinguistic work of Boman, as well as Bergson  on non-Western ways of construing time and space and of Reason and Rowan on ways of constructing new paradigm inquiry strategies. This leads him to formulate a “hermeneutics of indeterminacy” as a way of reading Biblical and Quranic texts that arise from spiritual experiences and as a way of  understanding what Isabel Clarke calls transliminal states of consciousness. Most importantly for society today, by comparing classical Sufi descriptions of a mystical state (hal) and mystical station (maqam) with modern and post-modern concerns about a “mysticism of everyday life,” he finds that, in both the classical Sufi terminology and practice, as well as that in the evolving theories of humanistic psychology, not only is there a mysticism of everyday life, but everyday life itself is seen in an extra-ordinary way, as a type of mysticism in itself.

This revisioning of everyday life is found also in David Abram, who has also been strongly influenced by non-Western thought - in his case by the thinking of indigenous peoples which links with subjugated ways of knowing. His chapter introduces a radical new dimension into the whole discussion in arguing powerfully that we can make sense of the confusion of different landscapes, different worlds, which now confronts us, by finding a rich and fertile common ground from which they all spring. He writes: “what a boon it would be to discover a specific scape that lies at the heart of all these others. For if there is such a secret world among all these—if there is a specific realm that provides the soil and support for all these others—then that primordial zone would somehow contain, hidden within its fertile topology, a gateway onto each of these other landscapes.” And he proceeds to find this ground as “none other than the sensorial terrain of tastes and textures and ever-shifting shadows in which we find ourselves bodily immersed.” From here he unfolds the liberating consequences for our lives of this vision of the core ground of all ways of knowing. His account also brings home our vital dependence on all the beings with whom we humans share this planet, a vital corrective to the human-centred vision of many spiritualities.

Many writers have reacted in different ways to the plurality of spiritual and religious traditions, with a consequent plurality of ways of thinking about mystical experience. Even those who support an integrative vision end up supporting different integrative visions! One prominent example is the transpersonal writer Ken Wilber who claims to have found a model that is supported by the materials of all the world’s major mystical traditions. We can learn here from the critique of Leon Schlamm[21] who contrasts Wilber’s claimed universal synthesis with the work of Rawlinson[22] which identifies four authentic routes to spiritual emancipation (Cool Structured, Cool Unstructured, Hot Structured and Hot Unstructured) and shows that Wilber’s model in fact privileges some traditions, being itself Cool (the source of spiritual liberation lies within oneself) and Structured (developmental, hierarchical). If we are to understand what we are doing to ourselves and to the world, we need to recognize with, Ferrer and Schlamm, both that there is a progression in understanding, in which some paths genuinely supercede others, and that there are nonetheless paths that are strictly alternative.

Final reflections

The vital practicality of all these ideas emerges time and again from most of the chapters.  Spirituality, or its repression and perversion, has become a pivotal element in today’s world, where the dogmatic, violent and intolerant factions of religions are on the increase – from fundamentalist Christians in the USA, to Al Qaida and Shas in the Middle East, to the BJP in India. From the perspective of this book we can unpack the causes of this with a chilling clarity. The subjugation of the ways of knowing of the poor distorts civic values to a glorification of material possessions, which has now led to the  domination of the world by globalised capitalism. It also perpetuates the hopelessness of those apparently trapped for ever in poverty and subjugation to imposed cultures that appear to deprive them of their identities. Reliance on the simplistic black and white logic of the propositional side of our mind then polarises the views of both rich and poor into seeing the world as divided into the camps of good and evil, leading to a vicious cycle of increasing fear. The implicational side of our mind, cut off from spiritual understanding, responds to fear and the threat to the self by generating an overpoweringly passionate certainty in each group’s own religious experience, coupled with an equally passionate damning of those with alternative experience. The two central meaning-making systems of the mind are out of joint, resulting in escalating cycles of aggression and violence.

The way out of this cycle involves the re-integration of our thinking, honouring diverse ways of knowing while being open to the constant growth and change that flows from the Spirit. It involves integration of the ways of knowing that have become sundered, and integration of the parts of society that carry the riches of each of these ways. It has to recognise those whose faithfulness to other ways has led to their repression by the dominant society – the women and the indigenous peoples, the anawim , the downtrodden, to use a term from Jewish and Christian spirituality[23] –  and the unforgiven in our asylums. We have known this for many years, through the analysis of the nature of inter-community dialogue by the physicist David Bohm, through the work of pluralist philosophers of science such as Nancy Cartwright, through the work of feminist theologians such as Mary Grey. What is new is an understanding of precisely how our failure or our success in achieving this integration is embodied in the structure of our minds, and in the need to re-envision the place of the mystical in the world.  

Faced with the entrenchment of our divisions, is there any real hope of achieving this? It will certainly not come without the courageous engagement of those open to spirit. But now the twenty-first century is starting to reveal the first signs that offer a possibility of moving towards what Mike King has called the “post-secular society”. ^[24] Let me end by speculatively listing some of these signs which may offer signposts to our healing.

Spirituality is gradually starting to be accepted into mainstream education. For example, in 1993 the National Curriculum Council (for schools in the UK) introduced spirituality as a required cross-curricular topic.^[25] As a further indication of this movement in the UK, at least one major provider of teacher training has adopted a Mission Statement involving serving the “social, spiritual, ethical and economic needs” of its members and the wider community. There is still a long way to go, both in the extent of this programme and its depth, but this movement in education could be the single most important step in ushering in the post-secular society.

Over the last few years spiritual considerations have started to enter some corners of the mental health services. Previously (as described here by Jennifer Elam) those who admitted to a spontaneous opening of spiritual awareness would have almost no hope of this being recognised by mental health professionals. Now the advent of an understanding of the basis of spirituality, and particularly the growth of the “recovery model”^[27] is making awareness of spiritual issues a part of the training of some therapists, while in medicine there is increasing recognition that “spiritual experience” broadly defined has positive biological effects on immune, cardiovascular, endocrine and presumably many other biologic systems. These, and many other trends, are pointers to a time when the stigma attached to spiritual experience might be replaced by a positive appreciation.

There is potential (would that it were closer to actuality) for a shift in power within Western societies away from the rich elite and towards people open to spiritually based values. These people are the “cultural creatives” identified by Paul Ray some ten years ago^[28]. While making up a large fraction of the population, they see themselves, erroneously, as a tiny majority and lack any effective route for making their voice heard in opposition to the views of multinational capitalism that dominate the news media. In countries with proportional representation elections, however, this constituency is now gaining its first voice in the world’s governments through the Green parties of the European Union.

There is a preliminary rapprochement between spirituality and science. This is vital, because in our society science has secured the high ground of political influence and has used, and still uses this to ridicule spiritual perspectives and suppress their influence on political decision making. Thus the opening of serious dialogue towards transcending their separation is essential if the post-secular society is to be established. Progress here is indicated in many books on science and spirituality, both high quality popular books such as those of Ravindra^[29] and academic books such as the series published by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and Natural Science[30]. This volume has charted close links between spirituality and both physics and psychology. Progress here has in recent years been slow because main stream scientists have been suspicious of “new age” writing, often with very good reason, and there is a vital need for more dialogue so that both sides can become better informed.

While these signs suggest a route to a post-secular society marked by tolerance and spiritual values, including justice for the planet and all beings that live upon it, and while I believe that such a transition is a practical possibility, I do not think that it will happen either smoothly or automatically. The route to the post-secular society lies through overcoming the conflict and fear of our divisions by non-violent means. The process is well documented. Many spiritual paths teach that it is love that casts out fear within the individual; and within society the non-violent means of overcoming conflict named by Gandhi as satyagraha, (literally: holding firmly to truth) considered by him as “a relentless search for truth and a determination to reach truth … a force that works silently and apparently slowly. In reality, there is no force in the world that is so direct or so swift in working.” (From a letter, 25.1.1920)  The chapters that follow lay out the conceptual foundations for this work.