Ken Wilber

It is probably true that the single greatest issue today facing transpersonal psychology is its relation to empirical science. The burning issue is not the scope of transpersonal psychology, not its subject matter, not its methodology-not its premises, not its conclusions, and not its sources - because, according to modern thinking, all of those are purely secondary issues compared with whether or not transpersonal psychology itself is valid in the first place. That is, whether it is an empirical science. For, the argument goes, if transpersonal psychology is not an empirical science, then it has no valid epistemology, no valid means of acquiring knowledge. There is no use trying to figure out the range or scope or methods of knowledge of the new and "higher" field of transpersonal psychology until you can demonstrate that you have actual knowledge of any sort to begin with.

I would like, then, to examine briefly the nature of science, the nature of transpersonal psychology, and the relationship between them.

THREE EYES OF THE SOUL

St. Bonaventure, a favourite philosopher of the mystics, taught that men and women have at least three modes of attaining knowledge- "three eyes," as he put it: the eye of flesh, by which we perceive the external world of space, time, and objects; the eye of reason, by which we attain a knowledge of philosophy, logic, and the mind itself, and the eye of contemplation, by which we rise to a knowledge of transcendent realities.

Now that particular wording - eye of flesh, mind, and contemplation - is Christian; but similar ideas can be found in every major school of traditional psychology, philosophy, and religion. The "three eyes" of a human being correspond, in fact, to the three major realms of being described by the perennial philosophy, which are the gross (flesh and material), the subtle (mental and animic), and the causal (transcendent and contemplative). These realms have been described extensively elsewhere, and I wish here only to point to their unanimity among traditional psychologists and philosophers.

To extend on Bonaventure's insights, we moderns might say that the eye of flesh participates in a select world of shared sensory experience, which it partially creates and partially discloses. This is the "gross realm," the realm of space, time, and matter. It is the realm shared by all those possessing a similar eye of flesh. This is basic sensorimotor intelligence-object constancy-the eye of flesh. It is the empirical eye, the eye of sensory experience. It should be said, at the start, that I am using the term "empirical" as it is employed in philosophy: capable of detection by the five human senses or their extensions.

The eye of reason, or, more generally, the eye of mind, participates in a world of ideas, images, logic, and concepts. Because so much of modern thought is based solely on the empirical eye, the eye of flesh, it is important to remember that the mental eye cannot be reduced to the fleshy eye. The mental field includes but transcends the sensory field. Although the eye of mind relies upon the eye of flesh for much of its information, not all mental knowledge comes strictly from fleshy knowledge, nor does it deal solely with objects of the flesh. Our knowledge is not entirely empirical and fleshy. The truth of a logical deduction is based on internal consistency, it is not based on its relation to sensory objects.

The eye of contemplation is to the eye of reason as the eye of reason is to the eye of flesh. just as reason transcends flesh, so contemplation transcends reason. just as reason cannot be reduced to, nor derived from, fleshy knowledge, so contemplation cannot be reduced to nor derived from reason. Where the eye of reason is trans-empirical, the eye of contemplation is trans-rational, trans-logical, and trans-mental.

Let us simply assume that all men and women possess an eye of flesh, an eye of reason, and an eye of contemplation; that each eye has its own objects of knowledge (sensory, mental, and transcendental); that a higher eye cannot be reduced to nor explained in terms of a lower eye; that each eye is valid and useful in its own field but commits a fallacy when it attempts, by itself, to fully grasp higher or lower realms.

The only point I wish here to emphasise is that when one eye tries to usurp the role of any of the other eyes, a category mistake occurs. And it can occur in any direction: the eye of contemplation is as ill-equipped to disclose the facts of the eye of flesh as the eye of flesh is incapable of grasping the truths of the eye of contemplation. Sensation, reason, and contemplation disclose their own truths in their own realms, and any time one eye tries to see for another eye, blurred vision results.

Now that type of category error has been the great problem for almost every major religion. The point is that Buddhism and Christianity and other religions contained, at their summit, ultimate insights into ultimate reality, but these trans-verbal insights were invariably all mixed up with rational truths and empirical facts. Humankind had not, as it were, yet learned to differentiate and separate the eyes of flesh, reason, and contemplation. And because (for example) revelation was confused with logic and with empirical fact, and all three were presented as one truth, then two things happened: the philosophers came in and destroyed the rational side of religion, and science came in and destroyed the empirical side. . . . . From that point on, spirituality in the West was dismantled, and only philosophy and science remained.

Within a century, however, philosophy as a rational system, - a system based on the eye of mind-was in its own rum decimated, and decimated by the new scientific empiricism. At that point, human knowledge was reduced to only the eye of flesh. Gone was the contemplative eye; gone the mental eye - and mankind restricted its means of valid knowledge to the eye of flesh.

For science became scientism. It did not just speak for the eye of flesh, but for the eye of mind and for the eye of contemplation as well. In so doing, it fell prey to precisely the same category mistakes that it discovered in dogmatic theology, and for which it made religion dearly pay. The scienticians tried to force science, with its eye of flesh, to work for all three eyes. And that is a category error. And for that not only science but the world has paid dearly.

Thus, in effect, the sole criterion of truth came to be the scientific criterion, that is to say, a sensorimotor test by the eye of flesh based on measurement. And yet here is the real point: "This position on the part of the scientists was ... pure bluff" of the part playing the whole. The eye of flesh came to say, what it can't see does not exist; whereas what it should have said was, what it can't see it can't see.

A "HIGHER" SCIENCE

Is it not possible that scientists themselves have defined the scientific method in a too narrow fashion? Could a more expanded science be applied to the realm of the mind's eye and the realm of the eye of flesh? Is science tied to the eye of flesh, or can it expand into the eye of mind and contemplation? Is state-specific science-science occurring on higher states of consciousness-a possibility or a well-intentioned mistake?

Charles Tart believes that the scientific method has been unnecessarily and arbitrarily limited to the eye of flesh by a "physicalistic bias," the assumption that only material entities are worth studying. The scientific method itself, he feels, can be freed from its materialistic accretions and applied to higher states of consciousness and being (and that is the concept of state-specific sciences). He thus concludes that "the essence of scientific method is perfectly compatible with the study of various altered states of consciousness."

My opinion is twofold: First, Tart has defined science in such a broad fashion that it can apply to all sorts of endeavours. And, second, the tighter and firmer we make his propositions, in order to avoid that difficulty, then the less they apply to higher states of consciousness and the more they return to the old physicalistic science.

If this is so, then it seems that the scientific method is not well suited to the higher states of being and consciousness, but rather must remain basically what it has always been: the best method yet devised to discover the facts of the realm of the eye of flesh. My own opinion is that Tart, in his pioneering attempts to legitimise the existence of higher states of consciousness, has inadvertently applied lower-state-specific criteria to the higher states in general.

Empirical/physical research conducted by the eye of flesh or its extensions will always be important adjuncts to transpersonal psychology, but they will never form its core, which alone is concerned with the eye of contemplation. Transpersonal psychology is a state-specific enterprise (not science), which-because it transcends the eye of flesh and the eye of reason-is free to use both; the former in scientific-empiric studies, the latter in philosophical /psychological inquiry. But it cannot be grasped or defined by either.

It is important to realise that scientific knowledge is not the only form of knowledge; it is simply a refined eye of flesh, and there exists beyond it mental knowledge and contemplative knowledge. Thus, the fact that transpersonal psychology is not a science doesn't mean that it is invalid, emotional, nonverifiable, antireason, noncognitive, and meaningless. Transpersonal psychologists tend to panic when it is said that transpersonal psychology is not a science, because the scienticians have taught us that "nonscientific" means "not verifiable. " But if transpersonal psychology is nonscientific, how can it be verified?

This seems to be a problem because we do not see that all knowledge is essentially similar in structure. That is, all knowledge consists of three basic components:

Those are the basic wings of any type of true knowledge using any eye. Knowledge does become more complicated when one eye tries to match its knowledge with a higher or lower eye, but these basic wings underlie even that complication. In other words, the injunctive strand demands that, for whatever type of knowledge, the appropriate eye must be trained until it can be adequate to its illumination. This is true in art, in science, in philosophy, in contemplation. It is true, in fact, for all valid forms of knowledge.

Now, if a person refuses to train a particular eye (flesh, mental, contemplative), then it is equivalent to refusing to look, and we are justified in disregarding this person's opinions and excluding him from our vote as to communal proof Someone who refuses to learn geometry cannot be allowed to vote on the truth of the Pythagorean theorem; someone who refuses to learn contemplation cannot be allowed to vote on the truth of Buddha-nature.

It is my own feeling that the most important thing transpersonal psychology can do is try to avoid the category errors: confusing the eye of flesh with the eye of mind with the eye of contemplation (or, in the more detailed models, such as the Vedanta, avoid confusing any of the six levels). When someone asks, Where is your empirical proof for transcendence?" we need not panic. We explain the instrumental methods for our knowledge and invite him or her to check it out personally. Should that person accept, and complete the injunctive wing, then that person is capable of becoming part of the community of those whose eye is adequate to the transcendent realm. Prior to that time, that person is inadequate to form an opinion about transpersonal concerns. We are then no more obliged to account to that person than is a physicist to one who refuses to learn mathematics.

In the meantime, the transpersonal psychologist should attempt to avoid category mistakes. He or she should not present transcendent insights as if they were empirical scientific facts, because those facts cannot be scientifically verified, and therefore the entire field will quickly gain the reputation of being full of nonsensical statements. A transpersonal psychologist is free to use the eye of flesh (scientifically) in gathering adjunct data; and a transpersonal psychologist is free to use the mind's eye to coordinate, clarify, criticise, and synthesise. But none of these realms should be confused with each other, and especially none of them should be confused with the realm of contemplation. Especially the eyes of flesh and reason should not think they have "proven" the Transcendent, circumscribed the Transcendent, or even adequately described the Transcendent. To the extent the transpersonal psychologist commits those errors, then the more the entire field faces the fate of the medieval theologist: it becomes psuedo-science and pseudo-philosophy, and is thereby destroyed by real scientists and real philosophers-and rightly so.

Transpersonal psychology is in an extraordinarily favourable position: it can preserve for itself the utterly unique position of possessing a balanced yet complete approach to reality-one which can include the eye of flesh and the eye of reason and the eye of contemplation. And I think that the history of thought will eventually prove that to do more than that is impossible, to do less than that, disastrous.