2 8 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 and Shamanic traditions. Nasr adds (1996, 259–60), “[i]n all traditional civilizations, medicine has been closely related to the basic principles of the tradition in question. Its origin has always been seen to be divine …The psyche was seen to affect the body and the spirit the psyche.” For example, Guénon (2004c, 26) illuminates the essential metaphysical principles found in traditional Chinese medicine and how anything comparable is completely lacking in modern Western medicine: Traditional Chinese medicine in particular is based more or less entirely on the distinction between ‘yang’ and ‘yin’; every illness is due to a state of disequilibrium, that is, to an excess of one of these two in relation to the other; this must then be strengthened to re-establish the equilibrium, and in this way one reaches the very cause of the illness instead of being limited to treating more or less outward and superficial symptoms, as is the profane medicine of modern Westerners. Coomaraswamy (1997, 335) outlines the distinctions between the understanding of health in modern psychology and that found in traditional or perennial psychology: The health envisaged by the [note: modern] empirical psychotherapy is a freedom from particular pathological conditions; that envisaged by the other [note: traditional or perennial psychology] is a freedom from all conditions and predicaments … Furthermore, the pursuit of the greater freedom necessarily involves that attainment of the lesser; psycho-physical health being a manifestation and consequence of spiritual wellbeing. Descartes’s dictum “I think, therefore I am” (Lat. cogito ergo sum) (2003, 68) situates human awareness in a fully enclosed sense of Self and sets this up as the criterion for existence. This is totally opposed to human identity as understood by the plenary traditions. In contrast, the transpersonal modes of knowing recognize a plurality of levels in our human nature, which are rooted in a universal and timeless wisdom that can be found around the world. According to Hindu metaphysics, as found in the ancient text Tripurā Rahasya (2002, 132), consciousness has no beginning as it is always already existent: “Therefore you cannot escape the conclusion that there must be consciousness even to know its unawareness also. So, there is no moment when consciousness is not.” Thought, being, knowledge and reality are all interconnected and unified in traditional modes of knowing. This requires a consonance between the knower and the known; as Guénon writes, the “Knower, Known, and Knowledge are truly one only” (2001b, 92). Medieval epistemology defined knowledge as “‘adaequatio rei et intellectus’ – the understanding of the knower must be adequate to the thing to be known” (Schumacher 1977, 39). Parmenides (515–445) emphasized something similar: “To be and to know are one and the same” (Coomaraswamy 1989, 35). This is to say that, in the traditional or premodern world, there were modes of knowledge, with their corresponding levels of reality, by which one could realize the Supreme identity. In this understanding, a distinction was always made between relative knowledge and knowledge that was Absolute. The transcendent or noetic faculty of the Intellect, immanent within the human being, enables us to know the fullness of what can be known. Sherrard (2013, 29) describes the quandary that modern science faces seeing as it cannot know higher levels of reality beyond itself: “Nothing can be known except according to the mode of the knower.” Shankara (788– 820) also made this clear: “Only the Self [note: Ātma] knows the Self [note: Ātma]” (Shah-kazemi 2006, 207) [10]. Within the Buddhist tradition, the same idea can be found: “A Buddha alone is able to understand what is in the mind of another Buddha.” (Suzuki 1961, 49). This principle is also discernible in the Christian text Theologia Germanica (1874, 153), in which it is written, “God can be known only by God” [11]. No matter how broad an outlook modern science adopts, its perspective is inevitably vitiated by a dualistic framework that tries to grasp consciousness as an object of empirical study: “The highest mode of consciousness, or consciousness in itself, is that in which there is no dualism between knower and what is to be known, observer and what is to be observed, consciousness and that of which consciousness is conscious.” (Sherrard 2013, 30). Again, “[t]he soul, like every other domain of reality, can only be truly known by what transcends it.” (Burckhardt 1987, 47). This is captured in the tradition of the Prophet Muhammad: “He who knoweth himself knoweth his Lord.” Duo sunt in homine – “There are two [note: natures] in man” (Aquinas 1980, 336) was an axiom in the West that recognized an outer and inner man, at least prior to the emergence of the Renaissance. “In any definition of Man, his inner and outer aspect are both to be considered.” (ibn al-‘arabī 1980, 73). Our theomorphic essence is unconditioned and unaffected by the activities of the mundane self: “Everything a man does in the lower part of active life is necessarily exterior to him, so to speak, beneath him.” (Cloud of Unknowing 1978, 72). This is articulated a little differently here: “[O]ur Inner Man is in the world but not of it, in us but not of us, our Outer Man both in the world and of it.” (Coomaraswamy 1977, 371). Modern Western psychology focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of the outer human being unaware that, by definition, its materialism excludes the possibility of an “inward man” (Romans 7:22)
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