3 8 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 8 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 2 2 nent in all phenomena – also transcends them. The human psyche, and its interdependence with all sentient beings, is essential for understanding the Divine Unity: “Your creation and your upraising are as but a single soul” (Qurʼān 31:28). The human soul is fundamentally linked to the “world soul” (Lat. anima mundi). When the former suffers, all other souls suffer as well, including that of the world. According to traditional cosmologies, the world soul is to the universe as the human soul is to the human body. Plato (429–347; 1981, 55, 57) articulates the traditional doctrine of the living cosmos as follows: “Thus…we must declare that this Cosmos has verily come into existence as a Living Creature endowed with soul and reason… a Living Creature, one and visible, containing within itself all the living creatures which are by nature akin to itself.” Plotinus (204/5–270; 1991, 318, 319) addresses the affiliation of the world soul with all living beings in the Absolute: “All is one universally comprehensive living being, encircling all the living beings within it, and having a soul, one soul, which extends to all… every separate thing is an integral part of this All.” The First Peoples everywhere have revered our living planet as Mother Earth. In a Pawnee ritual, the following words are sung (quoted in Fletcher 1997, 335): Behold! Our Mother Earth is lying here. Behold! She giveth of her fruitfulness. Truly, her power gives she us. Give thanks to Mother Earth who lieth here. Behold on Mother Earth the growing fields! Behold the promise of her fruitfulness! Truly, her power gives she us. Give thanks to Mother Earth who lieth here. The demise of traditional cosmology marked the end, not only of the “world soul” (Lat. anima mundi), but that of humanity. The cosmological model of the “great chain of being” was ultimately expunged from the Western worldview. This refers to the hierarchy of ontological degrees that make up the cosmos, from the most basic elements to the most complex forms of life. As the cosmos is a living entity, each sentient being honors the Divine according to its own ontological station. The great Neoplatonist Proclus (c. 410–485) writes: “Each thing prays according to the rank it occupies in nature and sings the praise of the leader of the divine series to which it belongs” (quoted in Corbin 1981, 105–106). The sacred cosmologies everywhere have upheld the unity of the created order: “The very root of ‘creation’ is the ‘singleness’ of the Absolute” (Izutsu 1984, 198). This is affirmed in the Kabbalah which recognizes that: “Everything was brought into existence from the Root of all Roots” (quoted in Dan 1986, 105). 4 Reviving Sacred Cosmology The gradual collapse of traditional cosmology gave rise to modern science, and its empirical modes of knowing have proved to be catastrophic; there cannot be a remedy or a way forward until this is clearly understood. Without a cosmology that accounts for the entire web of existence – and a recognition of its irreducible unity – the discipline of psychology remains ill-equipped to deal with the degradation of both the human psyche and the environment. The bifurcation of human consciousness, or the mind-body dualism attributed to René Descartes (1596–1650), is embedded in the ontological and epistemological presuppositions of mainstream psychology and has had unforeseen but inevitable consequences for the ecological crisis. Cartesian dualism, as the exclusive division of the world into res extensa (extended entities) and res cogitans (thinking entities) reduces all human experience to the private and subjective realm, thus obliterating objective reality or, at an ever-higher level, that which is ultimately Real. The split between the Self and the natural world is evident in the very foundations of modern psychology. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) observed: “Ego appears to us as something autonomous and unitary, marked off distinctly from everything else” (1989a, 12) and, elsewhere, he remarks on the “boundary lines between the Ego and the external world” (1989a, 13). It cannot be stressed enough that, without being able to transcend this bifurcation, there cannot be a true “science of the soul.” Psychology’s inability to fully discern the transpersonal aspect, that unifies all dimensions of a human being with the environment, clearly lies behind our environmental calamities today. This is evident in the following description provided by American psychologist James Hillman (1926–2011): “There is only one core issue for all [note: modern] psychology. Where is the ‘me’? Where does the ‘me’ begin? Where does the ‘me’ stop? Where does the ‘other’ begin?” (1995, xvii). While a split between “in-here” and “out-there”– is ultimately a play of appearances due to the obscuration of the “eye of the heart,” this is not a problematic binary according to the sacred cosmologies. However, a metaphysical framework is needed to reconcile them in the Absolute. The sacred relationship between “I” and “thou” has been reduced to an “I–it” relationship, creating a scission between human beings and nature which can only sever their transpersonal roots and render desacralized nature as the norm. Descartes’s dictum (2003, 68) “I think, therefore I am” (Lat. cogito ergo sum) not only reduces objective reality to sub-
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