In the context of the plurality of modern approaches toward knowledge, let us begin by considering four traditional approaches or perspectives toward knowledge: science, philosophy, occultism and mysticism. My purpose in this chapter is to broadly lay out and delineate the relationship between these four approaches to knowledge. In doing so, we shall as well lay out our conceptual basis for the chapters to follow.
First off, there is, and has always been, a constant exchange and interplay among the four in terms of their greater social context. In some cultures, for example ancient Greece or India, or Medieval Europe, the studies of philosophy, science, occultism and mysticism were so intimately intertwined that no real distinction was made between them1. Granted, these cultures may have seen the four branches of knowledge in a different light than we do today. Yet they saw knowledge in a unified framework in which all four of these approaches had equal validity. However, the way that science and philosophy are taught today in the universities, it is all too apparent that this is not true. Also, the way that religion has been disenfranchised from secular learning in contemporary culture makes it hard to realize that these four approaches to knowledge can, and have, worked together. It is only by a careful survey of the existent mystical and occult literatures that one comes to realize many of the ancient concepts did not necessarily possess the same meaning that we ascribe to them today in the typical university philosophy class.
Consider the following examples to illustrate this point. I was taught in an introductory class to the philosophy of science that the Greek notion of the elements (the ancient concept of the five elements earth, air, fire, water, and ether) was the classical forerunner of our modern periodic table of the chemical elements. That is, the separation of earth, air, fire, water, and ether was a primitive attempt by the Greeks to classify physical matter. As a matter of fact, the popular college introductory textbook on chemistry by Mortimer2 has pictures on the cover of the sky, the ocean, a fire, and rocks again referring to the Greek elements as a preclassification to modern chemistry. Yet in an occult context, these notions have a completely different meaning. They are symbols that are meant to represent the constitution of a human being as follows: earth is the physical body, water is the emotions, air is the mind, fire is the will, and the ether is the soul. Why the symbols have these meanings is discussed at great length in chapter 11. The point here is that the modern university interpretation is quite incomplete and seen only through the eyes of our own cultural beliefs and definitions.
A second example concerns the field of Chemistry, which believes that it pulled alchemy out of the Middle Ages and turned the pseudoscientific, halfmystical nonsense of the alchemists into an exact science3. What the chemists don't seem to realize is that chemistry evolved from a bastard version of pseudoalchemy. Chemistry, in other words, is actually the descendant of a quack alchemy performed by people who didn't understand the true nature of the alchemical symbolism, and literally thought that the goal of alchemy was to convert physical lead into physical gold. Nuclear physicists today even brag that they have accomplished what the alchemists could not by converting lead to gold in their nuclear reactors. All of this happy patting on the back is wrong. The essence of alchemy was highly spiritual. The alchemical symbolism was meant to be symbolic of the spiritual transformations possible in man4. No true alchemist tried to turn lead into gold, this was simply a metaphor of the spiritual transformation that Buddhist's call "enlightenment", or what Bucke termed "cosmic consciousness", or what I would call the essence of the mystical approach to knowledge; the attainment of mystical insight (see below).
Both of these examples illustrate how little people know, in general, of the actual history of Western thought or what other culture's ideas meant in the context of that culture. Such a general antipathy towards other cultures really taxes views such as presented by Alan Watts that ours is a culture obsessed by history. If that is true, then I don't know whose history obsesses us. But back to the point; these examples illustrate that today, the historical relationship between science, philosophy, occultism and mysticism is one of separation and autonomy, if not hostility. These examples also illustrate how we bias ancient concepts and interpret them only in a fashion meaningful to us, within the context of our culture's implicit assumptions about the nature of reality.
Actually, to the true mystic, nothing is separate from anything else, and any classifications of the nature of reality are seen as that-classifications. Reality itself, from the mystical vantage point, could care less what you call it: "IT" is anything you wish to call "IT"--and everything else as well. Mysticism is the true spiritual approach, it is the true way to religion. What we call religion today in the West is but a watered-down, overly rigid, dogmatic and institutionalized vestige of ancient expressions of the mystical experience. The true mystical experience defies the mind at all of its levels, whether these be words or rituals, dogmas or beliefs, and brings into direct comprehension the overwhelming and unquestionable, yet ever-changing and ever dynamic, living unity of all existence.
But today,in general, science, philosophy and occultism all mock the mystical experience as either some type of neurotic emotionalism or as an interesting anthropological phenomena. On the other hand, those not antithetical to the mystical experience take the paradoxical action of trying to express the experience in terms of words (examples here would be both J. Krishnamurti and Alan Watts). This is inevitable to those who have undergone the experience, but any such verbal and intellectual description of the mystical experience will only confound those who have not had this paradoxical, but very natural, experience.
Contemporary occultism is so fragmented into a variety of schools and dogmas that it is hard to generalize about common attitudes in actual fields of occult practice. Some embrace modern science and philosophy in a similar fashion to the ancient Greeks, such as Theosophy, where there is always dialogue about how the latest scientific developments fit into the Theosophical worldview. Other occult groups are as hostile to modern science as science is hostile to them, such as the current Neopagan Movement5. In general, as we shall see throughout this book, occultism has a completely different moral orientation towards life than does modern learning in science and philosophy. At least in theory this is true, although often, unfortunately, occultists have a hard time living up to what they preach.
On the other side of the spectrum, science and philosophy, as taught in the universities today, make a mockery of occultism and mysticism. This is clearly illustrated in the above examples. Yet the mocking presumptuousness of modern science and philosophy towards occultism and mysticism is only an admission of their ignorance and insecurity in the light of knowledge and wisdom that neither possesses. Still, without such a naive and juvenile attitude towards mystical and occult knowledge it is unlikely that science would have gone as far as it has, and been as successful as it has been, at unraveling the mysteries of physical matter.
I don't think the same can be said for modern philosophy however. I really don't know what modern philosophy has accomplished. Modern philosophy seems to me to be like a wildman running around in circles and making a whole bunch of noise but not really saying anything in particular. There is a quote by J. J. van der Leeuw that is appropriate in this regard:
"Especially in philosophy we have suffered for many years from a deluge of words, barren of action, and consequently the man on the street has come to look upon philosophy as a pretentious speculation leading nowhere, an intellectual game, subtle and clever, sometimes not even that, but always without practical value for the life of everyday. Often it has been such; disguising its lack of reality under the cloak of a difficult and technical terminology it frightened away the investigating layman and made him feel that it was his fault, his shortcoming which prevented him from understanding its profound mysteries. Only the bold and persecuting investigator discovers that its cloak hides but a pitiful emptiness...The profoundest minds have ever spoken the simplest language."6
The underlying idea here is that modern philosophy has had the most to lose by divorcing itself from the ancient wisdom and, in particular, the spiritual aspects of ancient philosophies. In this regard, note in this quote the line: "...without practical value for the life of everyday." What is the use of sitting around philosophizing if it does not do Humanity some good? Most modern philosophy is little more than a rationalization of common attitudes, the seeking of justification for implicit cultural norms that we know deep in our subconscious are not healthy or right. I will return to this line of thinking in section 3.
Within the scope of modern academic philosophy, when we look at such trends as positivism and existentialism, we see how barren philosophy has become. Positivism is the philosophical position which claims that all things can ultimately be understood in terms of science and mathematics. To a positivist there is no need for spirituality or religion, mythology, occultism, or mysticism because all of these things are made obsolete by the sure and precise knowledge of science and mathematics. Existentialism is the philosophical position that man's life is his own and is essentially absurd. To an existentialist there is no God, and even if there is it doesn't matter because ultimately man himself is responsible for his choices.
To be fair, there is merit in each of these perspectives, as they are both intellectual reactions to the explosive changes that have characterized the history of the twentieth century. Positivism has grown out of an over-optimism of the accomplishments of twentieth century science. Existentialism is essentially the opposite reaction; it is the dread and disgust, and obvious absurdity, of two World Wars and the nuclear bombs of science.
It is only when we take these views too far that they become a problem. Yet that is the stock and trade of the modern philosopher-to come up with a viewpoint and swear that it is the truth and all other views are obsolete. Whether it's ever stated or not, this seems to be an underlying assumption in the way modern philosophy projects itself: that ultimately through all of its dizzying word games, somehow or another, philosophy is going to find the ultimate meaning of things. This is how the modern philosopher justifies his existence and livelihood, along with the need to keep alive all of the philosophical baggage from days gone by. To be sure, not all philosophers and philosophy teachers are like this, but in general, this is how modern academic philosophy projects itself. I spoke in chapter 1 about the need of the early 20th century intellect to find the one complete and rational system of thought, and even though other branches of modern learning have abandoned this attempt, it still seems to be the subconscious motivation of modern philosophy.
At any rate, to a university philosopher no two philosophies could be more different. I was actually taught that positivism and existentialism are opposites in that they posit mutually exclusive worldviews. Yet I've read enough of each to realize that these two philosophies are different expressions of the same general approach to life, and it is an approach that is, to use LaDage's term, "metaphysically ignorant"7. Aside from the fact that both of these philosophies grew primarily out of a cultural counter reaction to the effects of modern science, they are both sweeping philosophies devoid of any spiritual content, completely ignorant of the great spiritual truths of mankind. In comparison, even Christianity looks good, for at least Christians admit to our spiritual reality. But these two philosophies have had their impact during this century, especially in science. I would think that if it were not for the positivist and existentialist movements and their general effect on our cultural development since World War II, our modern science might more resemble occult knowledge and be more embracing of spiritual realities. But the spiritual emptiness of twentieth century philosophy has indeed bled into science, like a child who is a bad influence on other children, and led our twentieth century sciences into the dead-end alley of metaphysical ignorance.
This is really an ironic situation when you consider the attitudes of the founders of science, right up from Kepler and Newton down to Einstein and Schrödinger. For all of these men were motivated by great spiritual truths in their quests to understand the physical world, and this spiritual inspiration obviously speaks through in the ongoing greatness of these men's ideas. These great founders of science, in their own eyes, and in spite of attitudes projected into these men's ideas in the modern universities, were intimately involved in a spiritual quest8.
In general today, one sees much of positivism and existentialism in scientific philosophy. One clear example of this is Prigogine and Stenger's book Order Out Of Chaos9. As a scientist, Prigogine's work in the thermodynamics of irreversible systems is outstanding, as is evidenced by the fact that he received a Nobel Prize in 1977 for this work. Yet as a work of philosophy, this book leaves much to be desired. Order Out Of Chaos is primarily a historical/philosophical analysis of the trends in science leading to the advent of chaos theories and the sciences of complexity. Yet, Prigogine and Stenger's analysis of the metaphysics and history leading up to present day science is as empty and devoid of spiritual insight as positivism ever was. These authors project the history of science as if the concept of "God" never existed, or that it was but a mere child-like notion to be superseded by supposedly more sophisticated scientific concepts. Other examples of this variety of positivism in popular science literature can be found as well, notably the somewhat condescending secularism of thinkers such as Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking, who, resting all faith in modern scientific knowledge, are also quick to belittle religious and metaphysical traditions.
The fundamental problem with modern science's metaphysical ignorance is that, since science has permeated our culture to such a vast degree, then to that degree also our culture itself is ignorant of spiritual realities. Thus, knowledge and technology throughout this century have grown and been applied in a spiritual cultural vacuum. And this has lead us to the vast problems we now face as a species with regard to pollution, the waste of our natural resources, the possibility of atomic warfare, over population, and so on. Again, we will return to this train of thought in the final section of this book and look very closely at the effects of science's metaphysical ignorance and see how this is related to present social problems, as well as our perceptions of ourselves and Nature.
But as the pendulum of history swings back to the other side, there has been in recent years an attempt to alleviate this spiritual vacuum created in our culture by a metaphysically ignorant science. This movement I will call the "science/mysticism" debate and is typified by books such as Capra's The Tao of Physics or Zulav's The Dancing Wuli Masters, and in the works of Ken Wilber10, Lawrence LeShan11 and others. The general orientation of the science/mysticism debate is that the underlying metaphysics of quantum mechanics is similar, if not identical, to the underlying metaphysics of ancient Eastern philosophy.
As was explained in the previous chapter, this trend is extremely positive in that it reflects a new openness in Western thinking. But in historical terms, like I mentioned in the last chapter, when we look at the trends of history, they move like a pendulum, and that is the real historical roots of the present science/mysticism debate. We must realize that this movement is also a counter cultural reaction, it is a counter reaction against positivism and existentialism. In greater social terms, the science/mysticism debate is a counter cultural reaction against the general metaphysical ignorance of our culture. The fundamental cultural theme that underlies this movement is the need to reintroduce a sense of spirituality back into modern academic learning.
However, the general theme to this debate is not all that new, and a very insightful and relevant discussion in this regard was originally presented in 1928 by J.J. van der Leeuw in his book In Conquest Of Illusion. The points van der Leeuw make pertain immeasurably to the issues discussed in this "science/mysticism" debate, as well as to a potential synthesis of science and the occult, and the relevance of such a synthesis to greater philosophical and mystical issues.
Van der Leeuw, as a representative of mystical and occult lines of thought, has never been a part of academic learning. Thus, van der Leeuw's ideas are more than simply a counter-response to positivism and existentialism. His ideas reflect the occult point of view in which all knowledge is seen as playing an essential role in human culture. Thus, he discusses the relative positions of science, occultism, philosophy and mysticism in the overall scheme of human knowledge. Again, he does so from an occult perspective, which, as we shall see as we proceed, is axiomatically grounded in the understanding of Humankind's spirituality.
"Philosophy deals with the ultimate principles and realities which are the eternal foundation of our world, science deals with the multitude of phenomena in which these principles appear to us; philosophy deals with the why, science with the how; philosophy searches for the ultimate nature of being, science is concerned with the functions and workings of this world of forms surrounding us...Thus the two, dealing respectively with phenomena or appearances without (science) and with the realities or final principles within (philosophy), are supplementary and equally necessary to a full understanding of the world." 12
He then proceeds to carry this distinction into the domains of occultism and mysticism:
"It is interesting to see how the essential difference and mutually supplementary character of philosophy and science are evident also in their respective extensions into mysticism and occultism...The claim of occultism is that this physical world is not the only world which can be investigated scientifically: it teaches that there are worlds of subtler matter which can be explored scientifically by those who have developed the faculties of perception in those worlds... clairvoyance...clairaudience and other similar faculties...(Yet) Occultism, as little as science, has an answer to give to ultimate questions; it may show us the workings of things-the how-somewhat further than ordinary science can... but essentially it is not the task of either science or occultism to answer final questions..."
" ...as we find occultism presented as an extension of science so do we find a philosophical mysticism presented as an extension of philosophy. The fundamental doctrine, that of the unity of all life, belongs to the domain of philosophical mysticism; no clairvoyant investigation at whatsoever level can ever observe the unity of life...Intellectual philosophy may come to the conclusion that there is a world of reality of which our everyday world is but the image (or shadow); philosophical mysticism goes one step further and claims that it is possible for man to enter that world...and experience living truth...In this way philosophical mysticism is as legitimate an extension of ordinary philosophy as occultism is of ordinary science."13
I think it is apparent that van der Leeuw's distinction is very useful in terms of the current science/mysticism debate. The most relevant point is that this debate is grounded in a confusion of the respective domains of scientific and mystical knowledge. That is, one is expecting too much from science when one supposes that science is capable of addressing issues rightfully belonging to philosophy and mysticism. Erwin Schrödinger also believed and said this14. Van der Leeuw's ideas dispel this confusion and provide a highly workable basis to discuss issues pertaining to the science/mysticism debate. As a matter of fact, the above quote provides explicitly the basic assumption of this book: occultism is an extension of science, and neither science nor occultism are relevant in terms of the ultimate principles sought for in philosophy, or directly experienced by the mystic. However, the relationship among these four approaches is not black and white, and we shall see many points of contact and much overlap as we proceed. Again, I will not subject myself to the arbitrary limits of intellectual specialization in this book.
However, I believe that it is fundamentally important that these issues, that is, the relationships between science, philosophy, occultism and mysticism, be put in their proper perspective if this counter revolution in science towards a more spiritual orientation is to be successful. In this case, success means having a fundamental and sustained impact on the metaphysics behind modern science and the social perceptions of science, and thus, on our actual definitions of what science is, and how it is related to our lives.
With this in mind, let us take the work of Ken Wilber, a prominent author within the present science/mysticism debate, and analyze his thinking with respect to the ideas in van der Leeuw's quote. Wilber's viewpoint is very similar to the one I am presenting here, with his position being that the mystical experience transcends the boundaries of science15. On this basis, Wilber presents his "spectrum of consciousness" approach to psychology16 to account for the apparently many different levels of human subjective experience, ranging from the physical ego consciousness up through the mystical levels of awareness. His notion of a "spectrum of consciousness" is somewhat reminiscent of the view of the "planes of Nature" as taught in occult literature (what these planes of Nature are will become clear as we proceed for we shall discuss them in great detail). In his "spectrum psychology" Wilber defines four broad levels of this spectrum which include: 1. the Ego level, 2. the Biosocial level, 3. the Existential level, and 4. the Transpersonal level. Without going into the specific details of each of these four broad levels, according to Wilber, each of these levels reflects progressively broader aspects of human consciousness. As we shall see, such an approach is used in occultism as well, in that each of the progressively "higher" nonphysical planes is intimately related to progressively broader aspects of human subjectivity. However, Wilber's discussions along these lines are grounded in purely physical conceptions of human existence and subjectivity, and completely ignore occult concepts which describe our subjectivity as nonphysical. We will see that occultism defines the spectrum of human consciousness, as embodied in the concepts of the planes of Nature, in primarily nonphysical terms. This concept of "nonphysical" has an incredible bearing, not only on the nature of any theory of psychology and human subjectivity that we may posit, but also on how we see the relation between physical and nonphysical, or more generally, objective and subjective phenomena. In other words, as we shall see, occultism has much to say about the relationship between physics and psychology.
In general, the main weakness of the present science/mysticism debate is that it completely ignores occult thinking and concepts. Wilber's concepts, as representative of lines of thought in the science/mysticism debate, do not make a clear distinction between mysticism and occultism, and so do not present the picture as clearly as van der Leeuw has done in the above quote. As far as I have found in Wilber's works, and in other works that have originated in the science/mysticism debate, these authors do not seem to realize the operational reality and methods of manipulation and perception (clairvoyance, out of body travel, etc.) in the nonphysical planes and the implications these have for modern science. These very topics are indeed the exact subject matter of occultism, and they have an incredible bearing not only on how we view science, but also how we personally view ourselves and the myriad levels of our actual experience.
The point I am getting at here is that the current science/mysticism debate is right on the verge of realizing that: It is not science and mysticism that are intimately related but science and occultism.
Van der Leeuw makes this very clear by defining occultism as an extension of science into "subtler" realms, and puts philosophy and mysticism in their rightful place as well. We will spend many of the following discussions elucidating the connections between science and occultism, as it is one of the two fundamental themes of this book that modern science and occultism are intimately interrelated, or, as van der Leeuw says, occultism is an extension of science.
Thus the bottom line to this entire discussion is that, in spite of the seemingly disparate character of the four approaches to knowledge embodied in science, philosophy, mysticism and occultism, they are all in reality highly related. Present trends in thinking have been moving in a direction that is making these relations clearer and clearer. Tying modern science to the mystical approach, as the science/mysticism debate has done, was the first step. This step has been necessary to show that science can indeed be "spiritual". The next step in clarifying the relationship between these four great classes of knowledge comes in understanding the relevance of occult thinking to modern science, and particularly to theories of human psychology and theories of physics. It is the very purpose of this book to begin this task.
Notes: Chapter 2
1To get a feel for how other cultures, especially ancient
cultures, felt about the relationship of these four approaches to
knowledge see Seligmann, (1976).
2See Mortimer, (1983), the cover to the 5th edition.
3This attitude is exemplified in Jaffe (1960).
4Accurate descriptions of alchemy can be found in Hall (1972), and Seligmann, (1976).
5Starhawk, (1982).
6van der Leeuw, (1968), page 1.
7LaDage, (1978).
8In Wilber, (1984), the author has done a great service to all those interested in the actual religious and metaphysical opinions of the scientists who have created modern science by collecting in one anthology essays written by these scientists about these matters.
9Prigogine and Stengers, (1984).
10Wilber, (1982) and Wilber, (1984).
11LeShan (1974).
12van der Leeuw, (1968), page 59.
13Ibid., pages 63-64. Regarding van der Leeuw's discussion of the relationship between science, occultism, philosophy and mysticism, I would like to point out that this quote I have provided highlights only the essentials of his argument. On pages 58-67, van der Leeuw provides a quite detailed and insightful discussion to which the interested reader is referred. Here I have only attempted to capture the essential argument presented by van der Leeuw.
14Wilber (1984), pages 77-84.
15Ibid.
16Wilber, (1977).
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