Ways of Knowing: Science and Mysticism Today
Edited
by Chris Clarke
Published by Imprint Academic, May 2005, ISBN 1 84540
012 7 £17.45
Overview by Author
(see also introductory chapter)
(Click on author's name for brief biographical information and chapter
summary - or scroll down)
Author |
Subject of Chapter |
|
Professor of Applied
Music |
Validating subjugated
ways of knowing. |
|
Writer, artist,
cultural theorist. Founder of A.I.M. (Artists in Mind). |
Creativity as the
immune system of the mind |
|
Writer and psychologist |
Mystical Experience as
a Way of Knowing |
|
Clinical Psychologist |
Interacting Cognitive
Subsystems – the twofold mind |
|
Neuropsychologist |
Attachment Mechanisms
and the Bridging of Science and Religion |
|
Teacher and mystic |
Mysticism and Integral
Consciousness |
|
Associate Professor of
East-West Studies |
Revisioning
Transpersonal Theory |
|
Anglican Priest. |
Matte Blanco's
symmetric logic and mystical theology |
|
Professor of
Mathematics |
Logic and paradox in
science and in life |
|
Scholar
of Mysticism and Sufi Murshid |
The
Mysticism of ‘Ordinary’ and ‘Extra-ordinary’ Life in Sufism |
|
Cultural Ecologist |
The sensory world as
the ground of knowing. |
|
Theologian |
Awareness and
attention: is there knowledge beyond the sensory? |
Chapter Summary,
including biographical
information
THE
SOCIAL CONTEXT
Unconventional Wisdom
June
Boyce-Tillman is
Professor of Applied Music at King Alfred's College,
This will
examine ways of
knowing that have not been validated by the dominant culture drawing on
the
work of Michel Foucault. It will look 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.
It will see 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.
It looks towards a genuinely inclusive society in which various
ways of
knowing are valued.
Creativity as the
immune system
of the mind
and the
source of the mythic
John
Holt
was a lecturer in the School of Fine Art, Art
History and Cultural Analysis at Leeds University and then Fellow in
Art and
Design at Loughborough University. Artist, cultural activist and writer
on
cultural and metaphysical thought, particularly in the fields of
marginalised
peoples and the nature of the “outsider”. He has written, from
practical
experience, on Native American and Aboriginal culture, the arts of
The
Chapter traces the author’s personal journey of discovery, which he
summarises
as follows:
I have always been
concerned with the elitist status of
both the arts and academic life. My particular research was in areas of
what
can be identified as being towards the “other”, the “marginalised”, the
“outsider”, and, it would seem, the “unforgiven”. Writing articles and
organising tours of artists and works by non Western artists and
scholars, I
was drawn to the spiritual and political in both the sacred traditions
and the
struggle for cultural survival, aspects which so often merged in a
desperate
longing for “self determination”.
I began to
take students into
I have a developing
concept that “creativity is the immune system of the mind”, that
creativity has
a natural tendency, an inclination, when stimulated and encouraged
towards a
heightened sense of “self-realisation” in the individual. This is, I
believe a
process of clarification of the relationship between self and the
world, (e.g.
self and body, self and environment, self and God etc.), and that this
need
manifests in diverse ways through the construction of language and
symbols. The
capacity to construct a symbolic language which clarifies and
externalises
perceptions of self is particularly evidenced when people are in a
spiritual
and emotional crisis either individually or collectively. This process
is
perceived as a mythological process, advocating the construction of
sanctuaries
in which individuals and groups can explore their relationships with
the world
(knowledge) without analytical judgement or censorship.
Soul's Sanctuary: Mystical Experience as a Way of Knowing
Jennifer
Elam is
a licensed psychologist who has taught at the
college level, worked in residential treatment, and worked in schools
with
students aged preschool through adult. As a Cadbury scholar at Pendle
Hill she
listened to many people’s stories of their experiences of God and
recorded
about one hundred of them. many of which came to influence the
paintings that
she was creating. She presently leads art retreats, facilitates
programs at the
The
chapter analyses 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. Those who are open to Spirit
are
labelled as “abnormal” and a continually narrowing definition of
“normal” has
evolved that has supported major changes in our political, economic,
and
psychological realities. We have moved from educating children from a
basic of
valuing democratic principles to educating them to be unquestioning
consumers.
We have supported a move from valuing equality toward massive resources
being
placed into the hands of a few and the profit motive as the guiding
principle.
The shift to a more narrow definition of normal underlies the creation
of
greater realm of deviance; pathology and criminality increases as our
tolerance
and acceptance of differences decreases. Intolerance and the profit
motive have
united in the recent past to usher in despair as the modus operandi; it
is time
for a different way of knowing to emerge.
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. The box of our Reality becomes bigger and can hold more of
us; souls
expand. 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 impossible. The profit motive must
bow down
and take its rightful place.
WAYS OF KNOWING: THE
VIEW FROM THE INSIDE
Attachment Mechanisms
and the Bridging of Science and
Religion:
The Challenges of
Anthropomorphism and Sect-ism
Douglas
Watt
has been a clinical neuropsychologist for roughly
18 years after graduating from
This chapter
attempts to
connect science and religion by critically dismantling fundamentalist
notions
about faith as anthropomorphic.
Anthropomorphic notions of God as a person obscure potential
bridges
between mysticism and what science is now revealing about nature as a
recursive
hierarchy of emergent properties, but anthropomorphisms also provide
insights
into the underlying attachment mechanisms informing much of religious
searching. 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. Comparative
religious studies have often times been hampered by attention primarily
to the
cognitive forms of various religions, with relatively little attention
to these
underlying affective themes, which this talk tries to summarize the
terms of a
fundamental affective common ground for religious and spiritual
searching that
is derivative of basic attachment mechanisms.
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". A reverence for the mysteries of nature and
appreciation for what science is now revealing in terms of a hierarchy
of
emergent properties (as opposed to positivistic scientism) are argued
to be
deeply compatible with the core of religious mysticism, emphasizing the
"oneness of all things".
Recent scientific findings showing a frightening rate of
increasing
ex-speciation and impending loss of vast biological diversity argue
that time
is short for those from humanistic traditions and perspectives to slow
a
frightening geopolitical momentum towards disaster.
This momentum is driven in part 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, vs. the current much more
divisive
focus on the cognitive forms, is seen as one potential antidote.
“There is a crack in
everything: that’s where the light gets in” (Leonard Cohen): a cognitive science based exploration of the
two ways of knowing.
Isabel
Clarke
is a Clinical Psychologist, currently working for
the NHS Community Trust in
This
chapter takes as its starting point the fragility of the human psyche,
and the
persisting gap between ideal and reality.
It suggests that this gap is written deep in the make up of the
human
brain – the bridge between the advanced primate and the language using
human is
just that; a bridge. Furthermore it is a
bridge that is not always passable.
Cognitive science is used to explain how the mystical quality of
experience which is the subject of much of this volume represents one
side of
the gulf in this inner landscape, temporarily disconnected from the
other,
whereas the more familiar quality of everyday experience is the two
sides of
the gulf well connected by the bridge.
Viewed like this, it is apparent that we are not talking about
two
different realities or dimensions, but about a whole that is
apprehended
partially by the limited instrument of the human mind, operating in
different
ways. These two ways of operating give
us the basis for two ways of knowing; the analytical and logical in the
conventional sense, and the other which is riven with paradox,
relational and
without clear boundaries. The one is
cool and sensible. The other, deep and
mysterious, wonderful and terrible. Our
society tries to ignore this other way of knowing in its elevation of
mechanistic science and technology, or harness it to the needs of the
market
through advertising and alcohol. The
“transliminal” as I prefer to call it, knows no such restraints. It seeps back in fundamentalism, drugs and
cults if it is not embraced in more wholesome ways.
Ways of Knowing and
the Quest
for Integration
Lyn Andrews is a school teacher whose life was
transformed by
a profound spontaneous mystical experience. Her chapter was invited not
only
for the importance of the integrated vision of the world that she
expounds, and
which has important practical implications for her own life, but also
for her
engaging account of the way she worked to make sense of her personal
experience.
Lyn
Andrews describes from a personal perspective her own spontaneous
mystical
experiences, and their background, arguing 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. She examines in the
light of this the distinctions between hierarchical and evolutionary
aspects of
integration, and the relationship between splitting and integration as
seen
through the literature that relates most closely to her own experience.
BEYOND
ABSOLUTE REALISM
Spiritual
Knowing: A Participatory Understanding
Jorge
N Ferrer
is
Associate Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies,
San
Francisco, and Adjunct Faculty at the Institute of Transpersonal
Psychology,
Both
contextualism (in
its post-modern sense) and absolute realism depend on the basic
splitting of
the world into “subjective” and “objective” on which both the Cartesian
and
Kantian philosophical traditions are based. We can replace this split
by an
understanding of ourselves and the world in terms of participation. In
this
picture, spiritual knowing is a participatory event: It can involve the
creative participation of not only our minds, but also our hearts,
bodies,
souls, and most vital essence. In this chapter, I describe these basic
features
of spiritual knowing, and show how a participatory understanding offers
new
perspectives for our approach to interreligious relations, spiritual
epistemology, and the very idea of spiritual liberation. Finally,
against the modern anxiety that tells us that if we cannot find
universal
truths we are doomed to fall into a self-contradictory vulgar
relativism, I
argue that the participatory vision paves a middle way between the
extremes of
absolutism and relativism. Though I stress the plurality of spiritual
worlds
and truths, I argue also that the participatory vision also brings
forth a more
relaxed and fertile spiritual universalism that passionately embraces
the
variety of ways in which we can cultivate and embody the sacred in the
world.
Ignacio Matte Blanco
and the Logic of God
Rodney
Bomford studied
Mathematics at Oxford and subsequently
theology at Oxford, Mirfield seminary and Union Seminary, New York,
specialising in Philosophy of Religion. He was ordained in the
Church of
England and from 1977 to 2001 was Vicar of St Giles' church,
Camberwell. He was a founding member of the
The
psycho-analyst
Ignacio Matte Blanco’s concept of two logics in the human mind will be
described. 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 thought 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 his concept of God as
both the
Absolute Maximum and Absolute Minimum will be discussed.
This concept will be explored in relation to
symmetric logic. A concept of God will
be derived from this whereby God may be 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. This is not, as it might seem, a simple
pantheistic notion, since symmetric logic is essentially uniting, and
in the
limit everything is seen as one. It will
be claimed that this too was the vision of Nicolas of Cusa and that
this
concept is compatible with orthodox Christian doctrine.
The logic of “both/and”
Chris
Clarke was
Professor of Applied Mathematics and Dean of
the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Southampton, where he
is now a
Visiting Professor. He has published 3 books on General Relativity and
papers
on relativity, astrophysics, cosmology, the foundations of quantum
theory,
biomagnetic imaging, the physics of consciousness and ecotheology. He
has been
a member of the
The paradoxical
language in which mystical
experience is often expressed seems to set it apart from the world of
science;
and yet a central branch of science has itself produced an alternative
logic
that seems full of paradox: quantum logic. This chapter first surveys
the role
that logic has played in Western thought, and then explains the
relation
between quantum logic and the bilogic that is related to mystical
experience,
using a recently developed framework that includes both of these.
Although they
are “context dependent” in a formal sense, this does not commit them to
contextualism, in the sense of Ferrer’s work. The chapter ends with an
exploration of the way in which these logics strengthen the movement
indicated
by other chapters, towards an open, creative, participative engagement
with the
world, without thereby being bound by relativism.
THE
NATURE OF THE SPIRITUAL PATH
“Ordinary” and
“Extra-ordinary” Ways of Knowing in
Middle
Eastern Mysticism
Neil
Douglas-Klotz is
co-chair of the Mysticism Group of the American Academy of religion
(www.eial.org/AARMysticismHome.htm) and co-directs the Edinburgh
Institute for
Advanced Learning in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is an independent scholar
of
religious studies, spirituality, and psychology, and author of several
books,
including Prayers of
the Cosmos (1990),
Desert Wisdom (1995), The Hidden Gospel (1999), The
Genesis
Meditations: A Shared Practice of Peace for Christians, Jews and Muslims
(2003) and a re-edited edition of Lex Hixon’s Heart of the Qur’an
(2003). He holds a Ph.D. in religious
studies and psychology from
This
chapter first examines the epistemologies inherent in ancient Semitic
languages
and suggests that classical ways of knowledge and interpretation
involved in
attempting to understand and/or evaluate spiritual experiences in the
Bible,
Qur’an and the other literature of Middle Eastern spiritual traditions
may be
inappropriate to them. This argument draws on the psycholinguistic work
of
Boman (1960) on Semitic languages, of Bergson (1913) on non-Western
ways of
construing time and space and of Reason and Rowan (1981) on ways of
constructing new paradigm inquiry strategies. This leads to the
author’s
formulation of a “hermeneutics of indeterminacy” (1999, 2000, 2001,
2002) as a
way of reading Biblical and Quranic texts that arise from spiritual
experiences
and a way of understanding transliminal
states of consciousness today (referencing Clarke (2000) on “spiritual”
and
“psychotic” experiences).
The chapter
then proceeds
from the general to the particular by investigating the ways in which
various
classical Sufi writers attempted to articulate the relation of
‘ordinary’ to
‘non-ordinary’ states of awareness. In this regard, it compares
classical Sufi
descriptions of a mystical state (hal) and mystical station (maqam)
with modern and post-modern concerns about a “mysticism of everyday
life.” The
experience of a hal denotes a state of grace that descends upon
a Sufi
practitioner, but which is only temporary and facilitates a new
“station” in
life that represents the ability to bring a visionary state into
everyday life
(Nasr 1991, Schimmel 1975, Ernst 1997). This functional dialectic can
be
usefully compared to various concepts of in the writings of humanistic
psychology (Maslow 1968, 1993; Reich 1948, 1949). In both the classical
Sufi
terminology and practice, as well as that in the evolving theories of
humanistic psychology, one finds the attempt to contextualize “everyday
life”
itself within a mystical framework, that is, 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.
The Eclipse of the
Sensuous
David Abram, cultural
ecologist and philosopher, is the author of The Spell of the
Sensuous:
Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World
(Vintage, 1997), for which he received, among other awards, the Lannan
Literary Award for Nonfiction. An accomplished slight-of-hand magician
who has
lived with indigenous sorcerors in Indonesia, Nepal, and the Americas,
his
writings have appeared both in academic journals and in such
publications as
The Ecologist, Tikkun, Orion, Wild Earth, Resurgence, Parabola, and
Environmental Ethics, as well as in a host of anthologies. David Abram
lectures
and teaches widely on several continents; he has also been named by The
Utne
Reader as one of a hundred leading visionaries currently transforming
the
world.
This
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. 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. The chapter 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 there unfolds the liberating
consequences for our lives of this vision of the core ground of all
ways of
knowing.
Awareness and Attention
Anne
Primavesi
is a Fellow of the Centre for the
Interdisciplinary Study of Religion, Birkbeck,
This paper defines particular aspects of awareness and attention and suggests that the interaction between them functions as a prerequisite for knowledge of any kind, including that which we call scientific or mystical. As such, it signals a non-hierarchical approach to human ways of knowing and, as implicitly prelinguistic, allows for paradoxical expressions of what is known.
The interaction between awareness and attention will be discussed under the following headings: