VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1 SPRING 2015

petition and cooperation do play a significant role in nature. Therefore, not even the most rigorous knowledge is a result of pure rationality and facts, but has its mystical, irrational dimension running through the personality of the researcher. Descartes’ mechanicism is, inter alia, the offspring of the obsessive-compulsive nature of his personality, just as Bacon with his hysterical-hedonistic disposition fathered a utilitarian empirism, and since they fit into the overall structure of their era, they became famous. Herein we have a tangible connection between morality and cognition because the quality of knowledge depends on the harmonious growth of personality, and every mental deviation manifests itself in some distortion of the result. True knowledge is impossible without self-knowledge. A researcher must also improve and inquire into himself so as not to be a lopsided mirror distorting reality. It is necessary to realize that all knowledge is complex by any means, even if some of its dimensions remain unspoken. The question of true knowledge shall then no longer consist in pretending it is the result of impersonal reason and machine data alone, but in asking whether all dimensions of cognition are properly articulated within it. That means we should realize that knowledge has several dimensions, each one of which has its own requirements and all must be brought into harmony. Disintegration of these dimensions made us understand science, arts and religion as completely isolated, unrelated worlds. Contemporary man thinks one thing, his feelings tell him something else and what he then carries out is yet another thing. Universities have their intellectual theories; churches preach an altogether different truth; and finally, economic life compels us to do something a third way, unrelated to the former two. We have three social spheres with three types of authorities contradicting each other. According to what should man orientate himself? How can he make responsible decisions? 3 Pansophia of Comenius The apostle of the Slavs and the creator of the Slavonic script, St. Cyril (827–869), dreamt the following when he was seven years old: the strategos assembled all the maidens of the city and he had to choose one of them for his life mate. He chose Sophia, Wisdom. He became a priest and librarian in the basilica of St. Sophia in Constantinople. In the Christian east, Sophia is perceived as a personified, beautiful being and temples have been dedicated to her. Wisdom that is personal, is integral: light of reason is interconnected within her with warmth of heart and the beneficence of hands. To develop one dimension in isolation, as happened later in the west – namely brilliant intellect, which is cold and morally indifferent – would mean separating the head from the chest and limbs and thus striking the living Sophia dead. The effort to overcome fragmentation among the sciences and different approaches has emerged recently in the west under the name integral studies. For instance, Ken Wilber (1949) developed a comprehensive view where the inner is always interconSpirituality Studies 1 (1) Spring 2015 43 (7)

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