S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 7 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 2 1 2 5 Samuel Bendeck Sotillos Man can be truly human only when he is mindful of his theomorphic nature. When he ignores the divine in himself and in other existences, he becomes sub-human. And when this happens not merely in the case of a single individual but in the case of society as a whole, then that society disintegrates through the sheer rootlessness of its own structure or through the proliferation of psychic maladies which it is powerless to heal because it has deprived itself of the one medicine capable of healing them. A crucial distinction needs to be made between premodern or traditional science – which is sacred and is always linked to metaphysics and modern science, which divorces itself from spiritual principles. Catholic philosopher and physicist Wolfgang Smith (2003, 21) has astutely noted that “[t]he fact is that every ‘bona fide’ premodern science is rooted in an integral sapiential tradition.” Any science that does away with metaphysics or spirituality cannot be a complete science; this does not mean that modern science cannot be beneficial in understanding the manifest order as long as it does not trespass beyond its own realm of competence. This is supported by the German-American psychologist, Hugo Münsterberg (1863–1916): “Psychology would learn too late that an empirical science can be really free and powerful only if it recognize(s) and respect(s) its limits.” (1901, 111). Modern science and sacred science can be distinguished by the former’s purely empirical method of knowing (through observation, measurement, prediction and manipulation) and the latter’s basis in sapiential knowledge (a supra-sensory, direct and unmediated apprehension of Reality). The world’s wisdom traditions speak of a transcendent faculty known as the Eye of the Heart or the Intellect – Intellectus or Spiritus in Latin, Rūh or ‘Aql in Arabic, Pneuma or Nous in Greek, Buddhi in Sanskrit. It is this intuitive way of knowing, to which Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) refers (1986, 270): “The eye in which I see God is the same eye in which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one eye.” Within the Shin Buddhist tradition, a similar principle is found: “[T]he eye, with which I see Amida, is the same with which Amida sees me.” (Kanamatsu 2002, 12–13). Another example of this can be found in a poem by the Sufi Mansūr al-Hallāj (858–922): “I saw my Lord with the Eye of the Heart. I said: ‘Who art thou?’ He answered: ‘Thou’.” (Lings 1977, 49). This spiritual organ is also taught by the religion of the First Peoples and in the Shamanic traditions. The remarkable sage of the Lakota Sioux, Hehaka Sapa or Black Elk (1863–1950) remarked as follows: I am blind and do not see the things of this world; but when the Light comes from Above, it enlightens my heart and I can see, for the Eye of my heart (Chante Ista) sees everything. The heart is a sanctuary at the center of which there is a little space, wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the Eye (Ista). This is the Eye of the Great Spirit by which He sees all things and through which we see Him. If the heart is not pure, the Great Spirit cannot be seen, and if you should die in this ignorance, your soul cannot return immediately to the Great Spirit, but it must be purified by wandering about in the world. In order to know the center of the heart where the Great Spirit dwells you must be pure and good, and live in the manner that the Great Spirit has taught us. The man who is thus pure contains the Universe in the pocket of his heart (Chante Ognaka). (Schuon 1990b, 51). Modern science willfully ignores the limitations of empirical verification: “We make our observations in all natural sciences by the aid of our sense organs” (Watson, 1924, 25). Put more succinctly, “whatever evidence there is for science is sensory evidence” (Quine 2004, 263). This approach is evidence-based but its truths are subject to any new findings which can lead to a revision of what was previously assumed to be true. The notion that empirical knowledge admits of little or no error, precisely because of its reliance on the senses, does not hold up. Rather, it has led to what is known as a “cult of empiricism” or the “tyranny” of evidence-based practices (see Toulmin and Leary 1985). By contrast, principial knowledge, which is grounded in metaphysics, includes (but is not confined to) what is perceivable by the five senses as it extends to what lies beyond the constraints of mere sense experience: [T]he premier instruments of investigation supporting the scientific method are no one other than the five senses that on their own, or in tandem with the recently developed rarefied pieces of scientific equipment that attempt to document at the quantum level and through empirical evidence the true nature of reality. In the end, we still rely on seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching in order to declare what we believe to be an objective reality. (Herlihy 2011, 1). Empiricism was known in the ancient world, but it was not held to be the most authoritative way of knowing as it is today: “[W]ithout going further back than what is called ‘classical’ antiquity, everything concerned with experimentation was considered by the ancients as only constituting knowledge of a very inferior degree.” (Guénon 2001a, 107). Empiricism remains vulnerable to the charge that it rejects modes of knowledge that lie beyond the scope of its restricted techniques. Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) speaks to this misguided attitude (1995b, 29):
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