4 2 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 mind but eradicating the soul: “Psychology is the Science of Mental Life, both its phenomena and of their conditions” (1913, 1). The figure who initially formulated the notion of a “psychology without a soul” (Lange 1881, 168), which aided in forming the secular foundations for modern psychology, was Friedrich Albert Lange (1828–1875), a German philosopher and sociologist. The revolution brought about by behaviorism and psychoanalysis sought to overthrow Medieval epistemology, which defined knowledge as “adaequatio rei et intellectus – the understanding of the knower must be adequate to the thing… known” (Schumacher 1977, 39). This is to say that the traditional or pre-modern world recognized that there were levels of reality that corresponded to modes of knowing at those levels. Sacred tradition resisted the scientific materialism of modern psychology: “Mediaeval Tradition Has Kept Psychology from Becoming a Science. – Psychology, up to very recent times, has been held so rigidly under the dominance both of traditional religion and of philosophy – the two great bulwarks of mediaevalism – that it has never been able to free itself and become a natural science” (Watson 1924, 1). To discard the “mediaeval conceptions” is to essentially abandon metaphysics and the spiritual dimension as the foundation of psychology. It is to overturn the timeless wisdom of the religions and their perennial psychology: “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21), “I am the Self… seated in the heart of all beings” (Bhagavad Gītā 10:20), or “[m]y earth and My heaven contain Me not, but the heart of My faithful servant containeth Me” (quoted in Nicholson 1914, 68). This inversion of traditional norms contributed to the rise of “therapeutic” culture and the “psychological” man in modernity. The emergence of modern Western psychology began with John Locke (1632–1704), one of the most influential thinkers of the European Enlightenment to whom was attributed, among other things, the development of empiricism [1]. It was the eclipse of the transpersonal faculty within the human being that culminated in the Enlightenment, which marked the beginning of a desacralized cosmos with its psychological imbalance and ecological degradation. This marked the triumph of reason over the Intellect or the “eye of the heart”. The levels of reality that apply to the human microcosm are also applicable to the macrocosm; yet they are hierarchically ordered and unified in the Absolute. In the same way that the human microcosm is tripartite – consisting of Spirit, soul, and body – so too the cosmos at large, according to traditional cosmologies, is tripartite in its ontological structure, consisting of the celestial or spiritual realm, intermediary realm, and the terrestrial or corporeal world. Sacred cosmology is integral to all of humanity’s spiritual cultures. The Hindu tradition speaks of the “three worlds” (Sa. tribhuvana): “heaven” (Sa. svar), “atmosphere” or “air” (Sa. bhuvas), and the “earth” (Sa. bhū). 5 Restoring Ecological Wisdom Traditional ecological knowledge informs us that human beings are both of the earth and the Spirit: “Man, the transient [note: in his form], the eternal [note: in his essence]” (Ibn ‘Arabī 1980, 51). We are not only in the cosmos, but the cosmos is in us. Within Jewish mysticism, it is framed as follows: “God…made this [note: terrestrial] world corresponding to the world above, and everything which is above has its counterpart here below… and yet all constitute a unity” (quoted in Schaya 2014, 90). The mystic and physician Paracelsus (1493–1541), expressed the link between the human microcosm and the macrocosm as follows: “there is nothing in heaven or in earth that is not also in man” (1988, 45). Within the Islamic tradition, this interrelation is also recognized: “We shall show them Our signs upon the horizons and within themselves, until it be manifest unto them that it is the truth” (Qurʼān 41:53). The Buddha phrased it this way: “Verily, I declare to you… that within this [note: fathom-high] body… is, the world, and the waxing thereof, and the… passing away thereof!” (Dialogues of the Buddha 1899, 273). To return science to its origins in metaphysics, humanity – collectively – must tread one of the time-worn paths of a legitimate religion. It is worth noting that the etymological root of “religion” is the Latin word religare, which means to “re-bind” or “bind back”– by implication to the Divine, which is at once transcendent and immanent. Mircea Eliade (1907–1986), the Romanian historian of religion, writes: “The man of the traditional societies is admittedly a homo religiosus” (1987, 15). Mainstream psychology reduces the human being to homo natura devoid of any transcendent frames of reference, which cannot but radically alienate the person from the Spirit and the created order. This decisive turn to reduce people to terrestrial measures alone is an unparalleled form of dehumanization. Joseph Epes Brown (1920–2000), a renowned scholar of Native American traditions and world religions, conveys an expansive conception of religion that includes an entire way of life as understood by diverse indigenous communities (2007, xiii–xiv, 84):
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