 Scientific and Contemplative Ways of Knowing David Lorimer

Plotinus  We are within a reality that is also within us  Remembering is for those who have forgotten  It is not the eye that sees, but the active power of the soul. It is this power that is at the root of understanding

Epistemological Pluralism – St Bonaventure ( )  Eye of Sense – sense experience and instrumental extensions  Eye of Mind – reason (dianoia)  Eye of Spirit/Heart/Contemplation (nous – gnosis)  William James – radical empiricism – rustle  Radhakrishnan – a physicist who rejects the testimony of saints and mystics is no better than the tone-deaf man deriding the power of music

Ways of Perception  Corporeal outside the soul – outside us, exterior, ‘apprehensive’, animal  Inward within itself – spirit – inside us, interior, ‘affective’, intellectual  Above oneself – mind – above us, superior, ‘operative’, divine  Six powers – sense, imagination, reason, intellect, intelligence, spark of synderesis  Plotinus: Nous beholds things in their true relations beyond the separating and recombining function of discursive reason

Journey of the Soul into God - Ascent  Mere reading is not enough without unction, speculation without devotion, investigation without wonder, observation without exultation, hard work without piety, knowledge without love, understanding about humility, study without divine grace, the mirror without divinely inspired wisdom.

Charles Haanel  There is one Principle or Consciousness pervading the entire universe. As this Consciousness is omnipresent it must be present within every individual; each individual must be a manifestation of that Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent Consciousness. Your consciousness is (therefore) identical with the Universal Consciousness, all mind is one mind. Each individual is the individualisation of the Universal, the Cosmic Mind.

Structure of Mind  Conscious objective (brain) Conscious mind directs, steers, and impresses (suggests to) plans and intentions on subjective minds.  Subconscious subjective (solar plexus). Prog.  Superconscious Subjective Universal -. ‘Through the [superconscious] we are connected with the Universal Mind and brought into relation with the Infinite constructive forces of the universe.’ (Haanel)

Modes of Perception  Sensory - observation/separation (cf contemplation, union). Goethe  Rational/logical – conscious mind (objective), time-bound, linear, causal  Psychic – subconscious mind (subjective, intuitive) – transcends limitations, non-linear, acausal, connective  Zerah Colburn  Psi – telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition  Divine/spiritual – superconscious mind – timeless, unitive

Goethe  None of the human faculties should be excluded from scientific activity. The depths of intuition, a sure awareness of the present, mathematical profundity, physical exactitude, the heights of reason (Vernunft) and sharpness of intellect (Verstand) together with a versatile and ardent imagination, and a loving delight in the world of the senses–they are all essential for a lively and productive apprehension of the moment.  The elements of the object, the perceptions of the object, flow into my thinking and are fully permeated by it; my perception itself is a thinking, and my thinking is a perception. Every new object, clearly seen, opened the new organ of perception in us… Intuition, observation and contemplation leaders closer to these mysteries - that God is operative in Nature and Nature in God.

Creativity  Edison – 1,093 patents  Elmer Gates – 247 patents (sitting for ideas)  Auguste Kekule dreams – structure of molecules

Walter Russell ( ) The Universal One (1928)  Matter is the motion of light.  See the unity of all things in Light of Me, and the seeming separateness of all things in the light of my divided thinking. See that I, the Undivided, Unchanging One, am within all divided things, centring them, and I am outside all changing things, controlling them.  All knowledge exists in the Mind Universe of Light, which is God. All mind is one Mind, we do not have separate minds. All knowledge can be obtained from the Universal Source of All- Knowledge by becoming One with that Source.

Great Chain of Being and Perception  Aquinas had a mystical experience while celebrating mass on December 6, 1273, just months before he died. “I can write no more”; he declared to a friend. “All that I have written seems to me like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.”  Richard Tarnas – “a developed inner life is indispensable for cognition – human mind as the organ of the world’s own process of self-revelation”