44 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 tact the outside world in order to urgently bring our attention to the environmental plight and its cataclysmic effects, should a radical change in direction not be taken in time. Up to now we have ignored the Younger Brother [note: people of the modern world]. We have not deigned even to give him a slap. But now we can no longer look after the world alone. The Younger Brother is doing too much damage. He must see, and understand, and assume responsibility. Now we will have to work together. Otherwise, the world will die. The sole purpose of all knowledge, according to the Kogi, is to obtain a balance known as yuluka which means to be in “agreement” or “harmony” (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1976, 269). A general Kogi response to the question, “How are you?”, is, “I am well seated”; in other words, the person “is at ease in [note: their] proper place, in balance and harmony with the world” (quoted in Ereira 1992, 50). To live in equilibrium with nature, Kogi ecological lore and cosmology teach the importance of living in moderation so as to avoid overindulgence in any form. The Kogi term kuivi –“abstinent”– is a reminder to rely on the Sacred and to be in a proper relationship with all that is (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1976). Incidentally, we recall the Hopi term koyaanisqatsi, meaning “life out of balance” or “life of moral corruption and turmoil” (Hopi Dictionary Project 1998, 154). All forms of traditional wisdom recognize that what we do to nature we do to ourselves, and that our inner disequilibrium will have a detrimental impact on the environment. It is through active engagement with the spiritual realm – including participation in sacred rites – that the balance of the world is maintained. Hehaka Sapa or Black Elk (1863–1950), an extraordinary sage of the Lakota Sioux, gives voice to how the Sacred permeates all facets of traditional life (quoted in Brown 1989, 59, xx): We regard all created beings as sacred and important, for everything has a ‘wochangi’ or influence which can be given to us, through which we may gain a little more understanding if we are attentive… We should understand well that all things are the works of the Great Spirit. We should know that He is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and all the four-legged animals, and the winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that He is also above all these things and peoples. The perceived boundary between the Self, others, and the environment requires a metaphysical framework to be fully understood, for they are at once separate on the horizontal plane and yet ultimately united in a vertical dimension. The problem is that modern science and its derivative psychology are limited to the horizontal and relative levels and do not have access to the transcendent. As the French metaphysician René Guénon (1886–1951) writes: “The whole of nature amounts to no more than a symbol of the transcendent realities” (2001, 22). However, because of the obscuration of our Intellect, we cannot see nature as a manifestation of the transcendent. Ibn ‘Arabī explains that “[The World] is to itself its own veil and thus cannot see God, due to the very fact that it sees itself” (1975, 17). Christian writer William Law (1686–1761) states: “There cannot be the smallest Thing, or the smallest Quality of any Thing in this World, but what is a Quality of Heaven or Hell, discovered under a temporal Form” (Law 1893, 116). In the Bhagavad Gītā (9:4) it is written: “By Me all this world is pervaded, My form unmanifested. All beings dwell in Me; and I do not dwell in them.” Through the recovery of our transpersonal vision, we can see – as Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) makes clear – the immeasurable in the finite: “For the sage every star, every flower, is metaphysically a proof of the Infinite” (2007, 4). 6 Discerning the Sacred Signs With the loss of a sense of the Sacred, our spiritual vision has become fragmented and myopic. Having lost our ability to see the theophany of nature, we can no longer discern the “signs of God” (Latin vestigia Dei; Arabic āyāt Allāh) within the cosmos and in ourselves. We are interested here in the connection between a science of the cosmos (as informed by the signs of God) and a science of the soul. The distinction between empirical science and sacred science is being underscored here: the former “seeks to derive principles from phenomena, the other seeks to see phenomena in the light of their metaphysical principles” (Northbourne 2001, 46). These signs are of a supra-individual or archetypal order; they transcend the human psyche but, at the same time, include it. As St. Paul says: “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead” (Romans 1:20). It is through the visible world of forms that we can glimpse the unseen realities of the Divine. Luther Standing Bear (c. 1868–1939) explains: “Wakan Tanka [note: the Great Spirit] breathed life and motion into all things, both visible and invisible” (Standing Bear 2006, 197). And St. Basil (330–379) remarked: “Things visible infer things invisible” (Basil 1888, 76). Empirical modes of knowing are in fact, as St. Gregory of Sinai (†1346) notes, based on ways of knowing that
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