This is a work that is concerned with building bridges, with building intellectual bridges. I will address many topics throughout this book, and these will be topics that are not usually discussed side by side. In my discussions of the many branches of science, occultism, philosophy and mysticism, I have not made any attempt to be overly technical and erudite. That is, this is not a technically exhaustive work. Overall, this book is meant to be a broad overview of a very complex set of topics. I have purposely taken a simpler approach in this presentation so as to keep this book accessible to a wider audience. For the reader interested in obtaining greater detail, I have provided a bibliography with references ranging from popular accounts of topics to current and highly technical scientific journal articles of pertinent subjects, as well as original occult sources.
The chapters of this book will be broadly grouped under three main sections. The first section will be a survey section in which we will review science and occultism. Here we will discuss the structure of modern science, and as well go into occult ideas and authors whose work will lay the foundation for subsequent claims. Section two will attempt to clarify the meaning and relevance of occult notions within the scope of our everyday lives, and as well will offer my particular perspective on the nature of a synthesis of scientific and occult world-views. Section three will serve to create a greater philosophical framework in which to understand the claims put forth in the first two sections.
This book has essentially two themes. First, that a scientific interpretation of occultism shows overwhelmingly that modern science and occultism are compatible forms of knowledge and can be synthesized into a hybrid "scientific occultism" that is superior to either branch of knowledge alone. The second theme of this book, presented in section three, is essentially a philosophical and moral approach to the nature of knowledge, and that is that our experience subsumes our knowledge of our experience, and not the reverse. Or basically, that no system of thought is capable of capturing the totality of the nature of our experience as human beings.
I try in this work to avoid the pitfalls of having to work within institutionalized concepts and definitions. What I mean by this is that I will not subject myself in this book to the limitations inherent in the highly specialized nature of modern learning. Though modern ideas shall play important roles in many points I will raise, overall such a framework is too limiting to express the type of insights I wish to convey. Granted, the specialization of the intellect is in some respects necessary, but in other respects it is highly arbitrary. Human knowledge and experience are in reality highly interrelated and interdependent, and in this regard, intellectual specialization is only a detriment. There are many levels of realization I wish to address throughout this book and the distinctions and classifications of the contemporary intellect serve at times only to cloud and obscure otherwise relatively simple ideas. But I must emphasize that much contemporary thought will play a critical role in the following discussions.
I wish in this book to convey to the reader an attitude, an attitude that cannot be described in the abstract but one which is dependent upon certain sets of facts, assumptions, contentions, observations. I wish to illustrate an attitude that can only surface through a mosaic of insights which conceptualize our experiences in particular fashions.
What this means is that much of what I will say will probably seem at times very abstract and unrelated to practical life. Yet I hope to illustrate to the reader that my approach is eminently practical in terms of our everyday lives, in fact that my whole approach is grounded in a pragmatic and operational orientation, one that is free of hypothetical conjectures and speculations and focuses only on that which is eminently "real" in the broadest possible sense of this word.
For I shall throughout this work challenge the reader with the claim that the most real things in our lives and experience are our attitudes and perceptions, the contexts and frameworks of our subjective experience within which we conceptualize the events we call life.
D. J. D. 1993
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