WORLDLY KNOWLEDGE AND SPIRITUALITY

The natural sciences form the basis of our knowledge of the physical world. The human or historical sciences, which include all the one-time studies known as arts (psychology, medicine, economics etc.) rest partly on the natural scientific basis and partly drawn their inspiration and insight from the world of consciousness... that which mediates what is beyond sensory-physical reality. Such studies are a bridge from the material and natural world to unitary spirituality. Rather than be confusing by speaking of a 'science' (scientia) of spirituality or of consciousness, we should aim to understand the meaning and purpose in and beyond life.. that is, aim for wisdom (sapientia).

Traditionally, attaining wisdom more or less meant gradually learning to know the self through insight gained by living experience into its spiritual and universal nature. When this character development occurs today it is surely hardly ever thanks to our educational systems and never to any special science. When the very existence of any self in the sense of a personal soul is not believed in at most university faculties today - except perhaps at isolated theological seminars, little wonder that self-knowledge is no part of universities' agenda. The slogan 'know thyself' receives academic lip-service but more as a mental armchair exercise than a matter of life itself.

Agnosticism and out-and-out atheism are evidently still very widespread in the scientific and academic community, and have long been so, even though great minds from Newton to Einstein and beyond have been believers in God. A much-sung Anglican hymn text by the mystic and poet William Blake refers to the 'dark Satanic mills'. By this he was not referring, as many subsequently assumed, to the terrible conditions of cotton mills of the Industrial Revolution but to those mills of mental scepticism and doubt, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. This reminds how atheism, or at best agnosticism, has been assumed along with faith in the scientific method by the intelligentia, the planners and the politicians.

Fortunately, there are some signs of an impending change here and there. For some, the most surprising new development in the 1990s is the beginning of a public dialogue and rapprochement between some leading scientists and those who believe in a creator God. Evidence of a rapprochement between some scientists and religionists is appearing in various books and journals.

A neuro-psychiatrist of the Maudesley Hospital, UK, Dr. Peter Fenwick, saw a re-evaluation of parallel trends in the once mutually exclusive religious and scientific worlds when he stated, "Since Galileo, who was in effect the founder of modern science, scientists have viewed the nature of the world as two sets of qualities: primary - things like mass and movement, and secondary - for example love, truth or beauty. Science has only been interested in the first because they can be observed and validated. Since religion fell into the second category, it was regarded as alien territory. Yet increasingly scientists are realising that such a hierarchy only gives half the answer. What is developing now is a new type of science. If you can find ways of validating secondary or private qualities in the Galilean division, then the gap between primary and secondary, and hence between religion and science disappears."¹

These strains have been heard before in 1942, however, when Professor C.E.M. Joad wrote: "Twentieth-century physics, it was stated in the books of Sir James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington, had revolutionised the nineteenth century conception of the physical universe, and the revolution, it appeared, was friendly to religion. Science and religion now, the clergy were told, pointed to the same kind of universe and taught, albeit by different methods, the same truths. Science, it was hinted, had even re-established God. Unfortunately, the self-congratulations of the theologians were premature. But the essential truths and doctrines of religion remained untouched by the criticisms of science, since the writ of science did not run in the world of which the truths were true and to which the doctrines applied."²

The relative unawareness of the role that immaterial 'realities' play in our lives are due in part to deficiencies in modern insight into philosophy and the relative narrowness of accepted scientific thought. Widely accepted wisdom today fails to examine fully or in a systematic manner the role of implicit assumptions, creative or moral insight, unavoidable leaps of reason and even underlying but untested holistic thinking, all of which are unavoidable in work of almost any intellectual kind.

Most philosophers of the past considered as great, from all the major cultures of the world, have held that the world of nature is one of mere appearances and that only the reality 'behind' or 'within' it exists with certainty! Even science bears this out in some respects and the latest physics is yet less able to decide what is real and what is not than it supposed in earlier generations.

Philosophy proper as instituted by Socrates - the love of wisdom rather than merely of knowledge and argumentation - is virtually absent from present-day academic institutions in the West, but it does exist peripherally where thinkers have moved beyond the technical, logical, rational mentality to a truly holistic approach, in which one actually takes the consequences of what one teaches and applies the lessons of unity and wholeness in practice in one's daily life.

The beginning of philosophy is the insight that appearance and reality are not the same. Neither Socrates nor Plato doubted that there is an imperceptible reality, which they regarded as non-corporeal. They aimed to show that ethical judgements are not (and cannot reasonably be) based on what he saw as sensory information and we today would call 'observational evidence'. The same basic thesis is upheld in another form by Kant and by many another major thinker. Our minds have access to some other and transcendental source in so far as we are capable of making moral distinctions and 'knowing' what is wrong. True, we make use of experiential observations when we assess any questions of fact. But questions of value are ethical ones. For example "Does the material evidence and testimony sufficiently prove the accused did cause the death of the victim?" can only be answered by an evaluation of the facts of experience, such as scientific empiricism can help establish. But the question "Ought we to return a verdict of guilty?" is really not a scientific or legal question... it is a moral one that no number of facts can solve. Likewise the question, does the law in question express a right, good and desirable value or not? These questions can only be solved satisfactorily by appealing to one's own conscience or sense of right and wrong. This 'sense' is not related to any sensory organ in the body... it is inner. It is not and cannot be the object of any scientific theory whatsoever, for it is not a sense-empirical phenomenon.

Though science demonstrates by reasoning that physical reality is quite other in most respects than we perceive it, and though it shows micro- and macro-physical to be far vaster and smaller than our senses tell us, the remains a yet greater reality that is 'invisible' to science. This inner reality is available to intuition as our consciousness. The very ideas which propel scientific theory forward are themselves evidence of an inner source, for they arise before any observed proofs and are then applied to marshal and order those facts. Discoverers of major concepts in science like Einstein, Heisenberg, Linus Pauling, Crick and Watson and many others have described how the intuitive grasp of the key solution has arisen in their minds as if independently, sometimes through a dream or a mathematical inspiration. This itself lends much credence to the Platonic assertion that a world of unchanging forms or archetypes somehow 'exists' independently of individual minds.

The non-corporeal realm has long been described in spiritual literature and scripture For example, it was been known as the Vedantic akasaor subtlest mind-stuff that penetrates everything and contains a complete immanent record of the same. This idea is reflected in some 19th century interpretations of the supposed 'aether' as filling and interconnecting all space etc. More recently a similar idea in a potentially testable articulation was put forward by Rupert Sheldrake. He postulates 'morphogenetic fields' as an immaterial medium that stores information or memory which is variously accessed by our consciousness, rather than generated by mental inception. Consciousness is thus seen as needing no physical substructure to exist, which also opens many perspectives onto spiritual experience. This idea of an incorporeal, formative cause which guides, say, the overall morphology of growth in living entities and which implies no absolute separation between minds is very close to the Platonic conception of 'forms' (eidos) .It has the advantage of being testable, and some preliminary experimental verification has already been successful. There is a philosophical distinction between knowledge and wisdom (Latin scientia and sapientia), corresponding roughly to that between the sciences and moral and/or spiritual insight. One may say that this latter is what makes for human being (homo sapiens sapiens) rather than scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge is always founded on what is observable to the senses, about the sensory 'outer' world, or else it is not acceptable to the scientific community. Science and spirituality, however, differ radically in their attitudes and assumptions in several respects and are even often today - particularly on certain key issues - directly opposed as regards their methods or standards of truth.

CONSCIOUSNESS, TEMPORALITY AND FORMLESSNESS

According to some natural scientists, correct assumptions and methods make the phenomena of consciousness and temporality 'superfluous' to the explanation of experience, much on the same grounds that they see the 'God hypothesis' as redundant. The existence of consciousness is actually doubted in science. This has to do with their incorporeality. So they are called 'epi-phenomena', that is, as mere appearances without physical foundation. Yet both do appear as accompanying our mental activity, consciousness as waking awareness (variously also dreaming awareness) and temporality as the passing time flux.

In many human studies one hardly questions the reality of phenomena inherent in conscious life or deny that they can have empirical significance, for they are part of the basic 'subject matter'. Only social scientists who emulate exclusively natural scientific methods question this.

Sense observation, being the traditional basis of scientific method, makes consciousness an unprovable hypothesis, an unobservable entity. Asking for consciousness to be the observable rather than the observer is indeed putting the cart before the horse. The cart contains the conviction of scientism that Cartesianism popularised, that only humans can be conscious or 'have consciousness'! Quite an assumption, being based on vulgar common sense (hardly on horse sense).

Marvin L. Minsky, the inventor of artificial intelligence, must himself have an artificial sort of intelligence because he said that the mystery of consciousness is "trivial. I've solved it, and I don't understand why people don't listen." One can but have sympathy for a person whose consciousness is still such that he believes computers will someday evolve far beyond humans, who are nothing but "dressed-up chimpanzees". He holds that humans may be able to 'download' their personalities into computers and thereby become smarter and more reliable. Does not this say it all about Minsky's self-understanding, what more need be said? (Scientific American) Go to 'Limits to the mind-computer analogy

Many other less superficial scientists actually expect future scientific discovery to disprove the idea of consciousness as 'totally unscientific' (a neurologist, Colin Blakemore). This would be unfortunate indeed, for it would apparently be evidence for one's own inexistence or, at least, one's own lack of awareness! That such circular proofs or illogicalities can actually be considered among qualified scientists who are in the forefront of promotion of science activities itself highlights how badly untutored most scientists are in philosophy. Some scholarly writers assert that the concept of a distinct consciousness did not arise until after Descartes propounded his cogito theorem. This applies at best only to European thought, for consciousness (eg. SanskritChitta) has been a fundamental axiom of thought in the East for thousands of years, and the Sanskrit vocabulary distinguishes a number of more precise terms for what is regarded in the West as one simple idea.

Since both consciousness and sense of time are ever-present in our experience as most basic ingredients, it seems terminologically quite fatuous - apart from being ontologically inexplicable - not to regard them as being or as 'givens'. Brief phenomenological analysis of the essence consciousness shows the following:-

Consciousness consists in the given phenomenon of awareness as the medium of all human experience, including our conscious reflection on experience. Inherent to awareness is the sense of being both an observer and an agent. (This also applies in some dream consciousness). It is sui generis self-aware, without even having to make itself into an object of knowing (such as through inner reflection). The self-aware nature of consciousness enables us to develop a view of reality, personal identity, interpersonal experiences, intuition of values like truth, love and beauty and the discovery of meaning and purpose.

Consciousness is 'located in the present', from where it attends to all experiences temporally, distinguishing past experience from present and from what is projected as the future. Normal consciousness simply does not confuse these, which suggests that time is itself at the root of the nature of consciousness. Whether time is therefore only a 'subjective form of awareness' or an 'objectively-perceived existent' - or perhaps even a result of the correspondence of both at once - is still a matter very much open to debate.

Consciousness underpins all human life and experience as the most basic datum which 'gives itself' at any time. So far, however, consciousness has never proven 'reducible' to any basic physical or sensory constituents, as have a great many phenomena in neurology and general science besides. This is really why many scientists deny it 'reality' or any kind of independence from the brain or the mind. Even temporal duration is thought to be illusory - a misperception of neural activities - by some scientists. Yet our basic experience of consciousness and duration resist all analytical attacks with the most sophisticated scientific conceptual tool of reductionism. The same applies to all the intrinsically inner phenomena.

Einstein denied time's transitory aspect altogether by saying, "For us who are convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent." Another statement of Einstein is less assertive, "There is something essential about the Now which is just outside the realm of science." His physics, however, seems to imply that there must be a multiplicity of simultaneously-existing 'selves' (i.e. as in Lockwood's 'block universe'). Yet such an explanation - following from the conceptions of the relativity theory - is highly unsatisfactory to intuitive understanding. It even implies that a single, unitary self must be an illusion (or even the possibility of one), just as the philosopher Hume claimed empirical self-observation showed. Likewise, time's apparent passage is supposedly only a result of the brain's memory of previous moments of a discrete, perceiving brain with no common identity across time. Without spelling out all its quirky consequences, one can see that this reduces the theory to patent absurdity.

Anything that can be seen, heard, felt or sensed in some manner has form... that quality which makes it recognisable as something and distinguishes it from other things having form. But not only material phenomena can have form... thoughts have forms too, or rather one should say they consist in forms... which is why we sometimes speak of them as thought-forms. In brief, any quality or characteristic that the mind can distinguish as such, separate from other qualities and characteristics, is a form.

Science studies the characteristics of things, their natural 'forms'. Anything that can be seen, heard, felt or sensed in some manner has form... that quality which makes it recognisable as something and distinguishes it from other things having form. The very fact that we can think about forms, however, means that we can somehow hold them in mind. At the same time, we can detach our minds from them, because we can rethink them, ignore them, recall them, reject and forget them and so on ad. lib. All this indicates to us that the seat of thought is itself formless... and that seat is consciousness. To think about forms means somehow to hold them in mind for examination. The mind, however, is form-dependent, relying on images and symbols in the form of memory. Though its materials can well be regarded as 'phenomena' or even as some form of material energy, they all appear as having some kind of form (i.e.characteristic). Without a consciousness that is capable of encapsulating forms, yet is in itself not in any way apprehended as formed, it seems impossible to see how the mind could move from form to form, juxtapose, compare, analyse or combine them. The mind may even be considered much as a machine, though very convoluted and supra-mechanical in operation. It processes all kinds of impulse and information; it perceives, learns, memorises, recollects, orders, analyses and so on through a whole vocabulary of its abilities.

The physical sciences' quantum theory describes the material world as arising of form, clinging to form and a dying of form. Matter has its own kinds of inertia, but microphysics shows that it is all constantly part of a process of creation, clinging and dissolution. Newton's 1st Law of Motion describes inertia ('clinging to stillness'), the 2nd Law can be said to define force in terms of 'a change of motion clinging to itself'. Physical science bases itself on the unspoken axiom that it is impossible to transcend form, that is, to conceive of formlessness or believe than anything is essentially formless. Yet consciousness is the closest instance any of us can have of such formlessness. It may not be conceivable in definitive mental terms, and obviously not in the way we conceive of an entity, that is, through its form or forms. Consciousness is, just as is Divinity, formless while also being capable of taking on forms.

Though the mind registers forms and also apparently creates new forms from old, the formative faculty arises by virtue of consciousness. Without a consciousness that is capable of encapsulating forms, yet is in itself not in any way apprehended as formed, it is impossible for the mind to move voluntarily from form to form, juxtapose, compare, analyse or combine them at will. This insight, that mind and consciousness are not identical but are of different orders has many consequences for philosophy and cosmology. This has been known since and before ancient Indian thinkers like Patanjali and Nagarjuna.

Consciousness is thus to be understood to be a formless continuum, the screen upon which all phenomena make their temporary appearance. As such, it cannot be limited. It cannot therefore be an object for science, always being the subject instead. It is always transcendent of any mental form in which scientific or other observation and description may attempt to clothe it. The many consequences that follow from the universal datum that consciousness is are resolved primarily in direct self-experience and only secondly in philosophy. No science of consciousness following any standard experimental methodology is therefore possible, at best it would be a science dealing with the forms or contents of the conscious mind and their possible connections with external behaviour and events. This would suffer from objectivism, the unavoidable in-built scientific fallacy of 'ontologising' what is actually transcendental, confusing the seen with the seer.

SUBJECTIVITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS

One message of mid-20th century Continental philosophy now at last seems to have begun to penetrate the British scientific establishment. According to the neurologist Dr. Peter Fenwick, science can tell us absolutely nothing about subjective experience. That insight, known to the human race since ancient times and capitalised upon by great transcendentalist thinkers through the ages, speaks clearly of the limitations of any science dealing with human 'subject matter'. That there are, however, other means to learn most exactly about the subjective experience of others, known to such persons as yogis and swamis in India and elsewhere, yet unrecognised is most intellectual circles, represents another cardinal blind spot and lapse on the part of science. Peter Fenwick studies the brain in unusual states, including meditation and not least after heart failure, and on BBC World Service (15/11/01) told of one instance when there was no brain activity after this - but the patient survived to tell of the now-familiar and typical very clear 'after-death experiences', which occurred exactly when the brain was totally inactive.

The question arises: what discipline, if any, treats of subjective experience in a manner that is both well-founded in the subjectivity of persons and has some reasonably 'objective' or systematically truthful approach? Whatever answers are provided in modern culture vary very considerably. In the humanistic studies - once called 'arts' - which correctly included medicine, the tendency is to want to extend the concept of science to include ways of approaching the subjective. Such ways either try to be strictly scientific and thus only appear to be about the subjective or else put aside the criteria of scientific hypothetico-deductive method. In the first case, would-be scientists try to ignore apt comments of the type made by Fenwick and in the second one usually opens for a very wide range of individual and objectively-undemonstrable methods (or even lack of methods). Such 'subjective' methods rely on the perceptivity, intelligence and veracity of the practitioner and therefore it becomes far removed from science as it is most widely understood to be, say, in a Newtonian sense whereby primary (objective) qualities are distinguished from secondary (subjective) qualities).

The classic schism between mind and matter - hence also between soul and body - that Descartes' philosophy rigidified and which has plagued modern thought ever since, is thought not to be insuperable. One attempt to extend scientific explanation to the phenomenon of the human soul or spirit is Fritjof Capra's vision of a future amalgamation of physics with ancient spiritual teachings³. As the way to unchanging truth, however, he fails to put sufficient weight on the fact that scientific knowledge is always subject to progress and thus to change. Further, his view of the mind as a pattern of organisation in a dissipative structure and cognition as a process implicit therein fails properly to distinguish mind from the formless witnessing consciousness, which most spiritual teachings, such as Vedanta, point out is - and must be - the only seat of the unifying and unitary spirit.

One tends to forget that some kinds of dualism are always necessary to understanding and cannot entirely be eliminated, even in monistic philosophy of the highest degree (eg. the Advaita philosophy). This does not mean that being is ultimately of a dual nature, or that the gap between consciousness and matter is unbridgeable in reality. But the attempt to avoid all thought dualism can not succeed entirely as long as there is both a subject and an object, which also implies it is unremovable as long as the subject and predicate structure of language and conceptual thought has to be employed. Monistic solutions to dualistic paradoxes actually only succeed in reducing a conflict of concepts by restructuring thought to displace the dividing line between subject and object further in the one or other direction, often without becoming aware that a dualism still underpins thought. Some thinkers would push the line to the ultimate objective or subjective limit, eliminating any facts or ideas that would challenge the claim to monistic explanation. Such is the case with scientism, which tries to eliminate the subjective and with solipsistic idealism which would deny the existence of anything but the individual subject.

Can there not therefore be any such a thing that would merit the title 'science of the subjective'? It is the view of many people, including myself, that such a 'science' - as a true knowledge of the psyche - actually exists and indeed has existed for many ages past. That true knowledge is what originated in the Vedas and has become known to the world successively through Vedanta, through higher forms of yoga and by subsequent methods in Buddhism and other spiritually-oriented disciplines. There are many directives on exactly how to start, control and test experiments, which have been carried out successfully by many, but obviously not in a publicly-demonstrable 'experiments'. Anyone who masters the elements of philosophy realises that the 'science of the spirit' is not and cannot be objective in the physicalistic sense. That which 'creates' science cannot simply become an object of its own creation, for it is transcendental. A spiritual science can only be objective in the sense of being a teaching which, when properly practised by each individual, leads to the same result. This kind of 'repeatability', however, is not directly demonstrable and remains a realisation within each subject's awareness.

From the viewpoint of a 'modern' scientist - such as the relativistic Einsteinian or the yet more sophisticated relativists of particle physics today - the drawback here is that such a science cannot be practised in the public sphere of the laboratory, textbook and classroom but only in the demanding practice of self-discovery. It would seem that many studies of a more traditional observational (i.e scientific) type may be carried out in connection with such teachings. Inward discovery and eventual realisation are though mentally non-transferrable and beyond the range of observation of anyone who has not attained it. But the behaviour of such persons differs, often very considerably, from the norm and this is in principle open to investigation. Another question is whether such persons agree or see any value in this. Certain facts and acts can and do accompany the higher states of consciousness, not least what are know as 'para-normal' phenomena of all kinds.

The 'science' of consciousness can only advance by conscious investigation of one's own consciousness. Such self-discovery, must take place on such a broad front - both when deeply engaged in the world and when temporarily withdrawn from it into pure subjectivity - that nine-to-five scientists and paid research workers tend to draw back from the effort and sacrifices required.

The 'method' seems to depend upon faith for the rewards are uncertain in advance and the time it takes and difficulties involved are very considerable. Analytic methods and demonstrable methods of proofs fall short of the 'subject matter' which is indeed oneself (and eventually 'One Self'). Experiments must by made through will-power and self-mastery, the subject being oneself... particularly on one's own unruly thoughts, habits, desires and yearnings. This does not mean the process, the trials and errors, the results cannot be observed and recorded... but this will always be on the basis of testimony... of the subjective witness, however many objectively-observable facts may appear to support (or to weaken) the testimony.

Further, one's interaction with the world, with others, must be monitored and regulated according to rules prescribed in what we may call various methods and sub-methods... in short the teachings of higher knowledge handed down to us in various ways through many different traditions. This is a broad front indeed, where life itself in the conscious living of it is the only possible ultimate arbiter of truth. The further the experiments progress, the more comprehensive becomes the field, making systematic controls and observations similar to those of the laboratory only possible for a mind of the very most highly-disciplined order. Even then such methods have their strict limits. Time and again, the mind becomes overwhelmed by the difficulties that confront it... including, eventually, its own abeyance and the opening of the supra-mental faculty which intuits directly without concepts or perceptions.

The early Indian teachings derived from the Vedic culture assert that consciousness is universal. All of the 8.4 million species of living being said to exist in ancient scripture (a figure modern science is gradually also approaching at long last) are regarded as conscious. If 'conscious' is understood to mean being able to be aware of one's surrounding (in some degree, in some manner), this fits what we know even of the simplest organisms, eg. the amoeba which reacts to light stimuli. What consciousness is, from where it arises, what it can or cannot scan according to the level of its evolution or individual development is a question not to be answered profitable by any natural science today or any kind of physicalistic methodology in the future.

The human soul is more subtle and layered than the physically-observable complexity of organisms, with all their astounding bio-chemical and energetic convolutions. To investigate the inspiring principle of physical life - the bio-energetic prana or chi - is itself certainly no simple affair. To try to find a physical base for consciousness itself, or even for its timeless archetypes, its tremendous fluidity and leaps between time and place, its successive levels of realisation or its core experiences of surpassing bliss and universal love is a travesty, a parody of understanding. In the final analysis, the very best means to study consciousness or the self is to follow the guidance of others who have mastered it. Failing the ability to study the phases of consciousness oneself, the best way that remains of studying these is by studying and practising the teachings of those who do know them.

THE INNER REALITY

Even the most advanced thinking in the vanguard of physics so far only brings one to the threshold of discovery of the 'inward reality', to which scientific method and physicalism deny existence. To believe there can be nothing more than a physical and mental life is a peculiar kind of cultural narrowness, a self-fulfilling assumption that itself hinders the discovery and development of the inner life. This is the trap in which experimental neurology and psychology have lost themselves

Gazing always outwards, scientific theory extends 'the known world' and so 'creates' the great complexity of co-ordinates or ideas by which it is fascinated. This viewpoint of science is partial and overlooks the inner unity of life, which occurs through the irreducible phenomenon of consciousness. For science, things assume an isolated and independent existence. The calls of everyday existence and of civilisation have brought us habitually to look upon ourselves in the same materialistic way in which we regard other things. The source from which all values and noble sentiments spring - and from which materialism is ever severing us - is known as the heart. It is by virtue of this, the core of specifically human consciousness, that we perceive unity, and hence can experience sympathy and empathy.

By studying the body, one cannot discover the intelligence inherent in it. By studying a land, one cannot deduce the existence of a king or a president. Likewise, by studying matter one cannot discover consciousness, spirit or God.

However much one may try, the human subject cannot become an object, even though it may appear to become objective, such as when reflected upon in memory. As Jean-Paul Sartre observed so well, its very nature is to be always ahead of the objective world, never able to sink down and become part of its fixed existence⁴

Add to this the fact that we can and must exercise our will, which itself gears inner to outer. By our will we select and modify what we 'take in' and also what to 'put out' in words or action. The result is surely that the human subject has considerably greater long-term influence than any external cause which affects the body or the environment. It is the only point of contact between the ideal and the real, where ideas and reality meet. This fact, the latent power of the individual spirit in the face of any sort of challenge, is still much neglected and overlooked in modern world culture and education which concentrates overwhelmingly on the 'outward' factors that affect us at the expense of our latent 'inward' resources.

The early Indian teachings derived from the Vedic culture assert that consciousness is universal. All of the 8.4 million species of living being said to exist in ancient scripture (a figure modern science is gradually also approaching at long last) are regarded as conscious. If 'conscious' is understood to mean being able to be aware of one's surrounding (in some degree, in some manner), this fits what we know even of the simplest organisms, eg. the amoeba which reacts to light stimuli. What consciousness is, from where it arises, what it can or cannot scan according to the level of its evolution or individual development is a question not to be answered profitable by any natural science today or any kind of physicalistic methodology in the future.

The human soul is more subtle and layered than the physically-observable complexity of organisms, with all their astounding bio-chemical and energetic convolutions. To investigate the inspiring principle of physical life - the bio-energetic prana or chi - is itself certainly no simple affair. To try to find a physical base for consciouness itself, or even for its timeless archtypes, its tremendous fluidity and leaps between time and place, its successive levels of realisation or its core experiences of surpassing bliss and universal love is a travesty, a parody of understanding. In the final analysis, the very best means to study consciousness or the self is to follow the guidance of others who have mastered it. Failing the ability to study the phases of consciousness oneself, the best way that remains of studying these is by studying and practicing the teachings of those who do know them.

Even the most advanced thinking in the vanguard of physics so far only brings one to the threshold of discovery of the 'inward reality', to which scientific method and physicalism deny existence. To believe there can be nothing more than a physical and mental life is a peculiar kind of cultural narrowness, a self-fulfilling assumption that itself hinders the discovery and development of the inner life. This is the trap in which experimental neurology and psychology have lost themselves

Gazing always outwards, scientific theory extends 'the known world' and so 'creates' the great complexity of coordinates or ideas by which it is fascinated. This viewpoint of science is partial and overlooks the inner unity of life, which occurs through the irreducible phenomenon of consciousness. For science, things assume an isolated and independent existence. The calls of everyday existence and of civilisation have brought us habitually to look upon ourselves in the same materialistic way in which we regard other things. The source from which all values and noble sentiments spring - and from which materialism is ever severing us - is known as the heart. It is by virtue of this, the core of specifically human consciousness, that we perceive unity, and hence can experience sympathy and empathy.

By studying the body, one cannot discover the intelligence inherent in it. By studying a land, one cannot deduce the existence of a king or a president. Likewise, by studying matter one cannot discover consciousness, spirit or God.

However much one may try, the human subject cannot become an object, even though it may appear to become objective, such as when reflected upon in memory. As Jean-Paul Sartre observed so well, its very nature is to be always ahead of the objective world, never able to sink down and become part of its fixed existence(Being and Nothingness Methuen. London, 1956). This 'transcendence' is what makes each one of us who we are and allows us as observing subjects mentally and spiritually to range beyond even time and space through the human mind at will. This is to what the term 'inner reality' points. The human subject is like the lens of both film camera and film projector, everything must pass through it, inwards and outwards, in order that anything be brought to light. And it is only the subject for whom anything is brought to light at all.

SCIENCE AND GOD

That there could be an agency at work in the material world: one with meaningful purposes and itself of supra-human intelligence and capacity is rejected by people who regard the scientific world-view as the peak of human progress. They regard every such sort of thesis as unproven and unprovable and thus as not even a likely hypothesis... an attitude that itself is based on unscientific presumptions. They might 'explain' it as a case of self-delusion, a fantasy of 'wish-fulfillment' or as a fallacy of imputing human qualities to nature 'anthropomorphically' and so on.

With talk of a 'science of consciousness', one also wonders whether physicists, physiologists or psychiatrists will be the first to announce a new experimental 'science of God' as the subject of the future (having already explored the science of no-God), promising a plunge into His inscrutable ways! But then how would anyone with a scientific world-view guess that consciousness and God might be connected? Some speak as if the mind of the Almighty provided a neat figure of speech or even, one suspects, some kind of unanticipated spin-off of Big Bang theory! Stephen Hawking suggests that this kind of scientific theory may somehow be akin to 'reading the mind of God'! What a come-down from the sublime conceptions of the greatest scriptures. Despite higher maths and astrophysics, scientists can actually only demonstrate a depleted understanding of the cosmos in reducing it entirely to a universe of physical appearances and mental gymnastics.

The nature of intellectual and scientific thought is to be rational and discursive but not intuitive. It inclines towards faith in whatever is established by its methods or has become routine belief within the fairly narrow social collegial circles, and so to doubt all else. Apart from the fact that this is psychologically and practically impossible to carry through, the task it attempts can be compared to an attempt to get above the clouds by building a pyramid. The base of 'building blocks' of knowledge must cover a vast area and evenly so. The structure must be systematically established without weak points or gaps. Yet the sheer mass of material required would be so enormous that the apex could never even get into the stratosphere, let alone above the atmosphere. This is only an evident fact to those who have at some time actually 'been above the clouds'. Whether by their own efforts, through some inexplicable grace or apparent chance, such persons have directly experienced the limitations of all intellect through that indubitable crystal-clear and immediate transcendental intuition, the knowing of which is interior to, and superior to, all the activities of the thinking mind. The extent of the limits of what can be known are most likely set by the the finitude of human faculties in the physical universe before a little-known infinite cosmos.

Spirituality takes many different forms or 'ways'. That there are many existentially empty and as many more directly fradulent forms on offer today is beyond question. However, it is universal among great spiritual movements to reject the assumption of ontological materialism in advance and either assume it to be false or suspend judgement upon it. Therefore the teachings employed do not have to conform to sense empiricism or even to the principle of contradiction. Spiritual language is often inclusive of apparent paradoxes and contradictions (rather than exclusive) seeing such opposing theses as unavoidable as soon as one begins to formulate generalisations and to try to express anything about higher experience.

Spirituality is primarily a matter of practice requiring active participation of the subject and is not merely 'observational' in its approach to truth. It is necessarily less intellectual and theoretical than it is consciously active and practical. Emotional experiences and devotional feeling such as in love of fellowmen, Creation and - for those who choose - God, are part and parcel of most spiritual development.

Can we 'know' of the existence of God? The answer given by a large number of mature, intelligent and self-sacrificing persons is a resounding 'Yes'! This does not mean that we can know with scientific likelihood, because it is not a question of knowing anything available to the senses or their extensions through instruments and scientific technology. Einstein's belief in God, often quoted, was not based on sensory observation but on the kind of observation which reviews the mind-cosmos itself and therein discovers the soul and the workings of the spirit. Most scripture assure that even God can and does eventually manifest.

Others do briefly ponder the possible existence of God. Those who do not believe that the human soul is a miasma and does not exist do not base this on personal experience... at least one would hope not. All surely depends at bottom on personal experience, obviously also any faith one may hold in the revelatory nature of world scriptures (of which virtually all assert the human soul and its relation to the highest principle, very commonly identified by the name God).

The main import of the fact of the existence of an all-encompassing intelligence for science, seldom seriously considered in such circles, is that an omnipotent Creator is not necessarily or always limited by the laws of nature, created by himself. Human freedom, very limited though it actually is, is still itself evidence that we are not under the enforcement of rigid cast-iron laws.

SCIENCE AND ALLEGED MIRACLES

If Arthur Clarke's pseudo-axiom were also applied to what scientists rigidly believe does not already occur, it may be closer to empirical reality. The phenomena rejected by science include most para-normal occurrences up to and including yogic powers, but little makes the physicalist more patronisingly superior than mention of a physical miracle.

The first obvious reason for this is that the world appears through the theory-tinted glasses to the physicalist, whose ingrained habits of thought and towering superstructure of empirical detail and theoretical conviction preclude the kind of open-minded approach that allows its correction. The reorganisation of thought required - at both the philosophical and personal level - is evidently felt to be far too radical for the majority of professional scientists and intellectuals to risk undertaking.

The word miracle can refer to many different concepts as well as many different events. Briefly, by a miracle is meant here an event which is impossible according to the known laws of physical science. Note that this definition does not go so far as to assert that it is necessarily the result of divine agency or God's will. Such a miracle should be called a 'divine miracle', the nature of which agency would obviously put it beyond scientific investigation.

Plenty has been written, of course, uncovering miraculous claims to show that they were either to be the blindness of enthusiasms, simple-minded and uncritical belief or out-and-out fraud. On the question of mediumship, spiritualism and healing there have indeed been many cases of proven fraud. Obviously, however, this does not prove that genuine cases do not occur.

On supernatural events, Paul Davies writes that although he obviously can't prove that they never happen, he sees 'no reason to suppose that they do'. His inclination is 'to assume that the laws of nature are obeyed at all times.' To see no reason, not even one, speaks not only of his admitted lack of personal experience of such events, but surely also of extreme dearth of information on this extensive subject.

Reasons that favour their existence is a massive body of highly reliable testimony available to all serious investigators, even after having rejected about as great a mass of unreliable and often fradulent testimony. Further, opportunities exist today to witness at first hand physically-observable supernatural events, if one genuinely seeks so to do. Considering reasons, as distinct from observables, the very concept of a miracle implies that it is a gratuitous boon granted by an omnipotent divine power which is therefore not subject to the very laws created and upheld by it. Further, according to all the great scriptures, divine agency is not subject to the demands of scientific experimenters nor is it explainable, and doubtless not by the limiting methods of science. As reasons, these are no less well founded in human experience and history, no less well integrated in a total vision of the cosmos, than those for or against the still conflicting and highly incomplete evidence used to reason for one or another type of physical universe.

Unfortunately, an enormous bias towards all the rationally problematic forms of Judeo-Christian theology (as distinct from faith) in academic institutions and the Western media greatly hinders appreciation of the exceptional rationality and wholeness of the most highly-articulated Eastern conceptions of mankind, the cosmos and God.

Scientific judgement often becomes at once confused and clouded by irrational ideas and emotions whenever major miracles are reported, but there is seldom a scientist to be found who takes the trouble even to carry out a single direct observation. One classic recent case can serve as a case study: the reports of milk-drinking statuettes of several Hindu deities (the elephant-headed deity Ganesh in most cases) in hundreds of Indian temples, shrines and homes from dozens of countries around the world continuing throughout a 24-hours period on September 21, 1995, which were observed by many hundreds of thousands of people, including many who were incredulous at the outset, not least radio and TV reporters.

The treatment by scientific spokesmen interviewed about this was peremptory and highly unconvincing, who did not bother to observe or test the easily-available phenomena, yet dismissing all reports out of hand with quasi-hypotheses about 'surface absorption of liquid by porous materials'. The entire event and all evidence was soon totally ignored. The phenomenon was extremely widespread throughout India: crowds thronged temples in dozens of cities, including New Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras where milk shortages were common. Estimates of the overall number of people who witnessed this cannot be accurate, but New Delhi alone has about 5,000 roadside temples and crowds of up to 300 per temple were reported. It was also observed on the same day at various locations in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Italy, the USA, UK, Canada, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Nepal, Indonesia, the West Indies, Argentina, Fiji, Mauritius, Dubai, Rome, Denmark, and Norway. See 'milk-drinking idols'

Apart from this phenomenon, the continuous materialisation from nothing of a variety holy materials including fragrant ash, nectar and kum-kum - and sometimes also of small religious objects - on shrines and holy pictures in thousands of homes in most countries around the world, which can be observed by any person willing to take the trouble of investigating thoroughly, as the present author has done on a number of occasions at various places, such as in India and England.

That science is per definition in no position to explain any phenomena that may break with all (known) physical laws and related ontological assumptions still does not free scientists from the obligation of at least seeking the truth and carrying out observations before propounding sheer dogma. The silliest and least scientific old saw of scientists is that such phenomena are induced by such means as 'mass hypnosis' (about which science knows almost nothing anyhow) and depend strongly upon advance faith in the observer. There are no phenomena - material or immaterial, outer or inner - that can be rejected as wholly irrelevant to seekers of truth. If science has no interest in such, this can only weaken the interest and relevance of science to the great questions of human life and destiny.

There are admittedly many very extraordinary claims being made in the world today and as many similar examples of scientific scepticism or scorn. Such phenomena are regularly denounced as cases of anything from lunacy to fraud, as arising from the wish for a media sensation or for a way of making personal name, fame and gain. There is enough evidence to make anyone aware that this is likely enough to be the case but not always to explain them away by pseudo-physical theories. There are also enough persons in science who are willing to do this, themselves have no relevant observational basis, nor wishing to obtain any or checking the facts. This was shown by 'experts' - for example, those interviewed by BBC World Service science reporters about the Altogether, another complete demonstration of media superficiality and dearly-held preconceptions.

The image of scientists engendered or reinforced by 'know-all in advance' attitudes does no credit to those who hold them. If unable to investigate properly, it is better to remain silent on subjects beyond one's field of experience. The importance of reinstating the veracity, reserve and intellectual competence of scientists depends on their setting good examples, setting limits to scientific pretensions of being able to answer the major questions of human life.

A CONCLUDING REMARK ON SCIENCE LIMITED

Now, the preceding chapters doubtless give an impression of science at its worst, in its most blinkered, bungling, presumptions and dangerous aspects. Some of those with most blind faith in science will probably find it to be below their contempt. However, let it be said that there is no doubt that many scientists have less personal ambition than aspiration to be of service to humanity, and many of them make sacrifices to as to pursue ethically right research goals.

The enemies of the humanitarian spirit of science - world-wide economism, commercialism, consumerism and materialism - have been becoming more of an enemy working from within science. The individual scientist can perhaps best stand up against these pressures through increased awareness of events and self-reflection, which can be effective only up to a point. There is therefore a need for those many scientists who do not wish to contribute to the blinder research trends - or be identified with the simplistic pseudo-philosophy involved - consciously and determinedly to organise across disciplines and other dividing influences to raise the original independent spirit of truth and goodness. This is also a task for reorienting the intellectual basis of scientific investigation, requiring the development of an integrated general meta-scientific effort and much more comprehensive and compassionate forms of understanding, not least in the various sciences and many scientific communities. Questions about the nature and function of 'human understanding' in the widest and highest senses of the word can only be answered through philosophy, working in conjunction with humanities that are purged of objectivism and hence of those misplaced concreteness and distorting quantification of the kind predominant in much so-called 'social science'.