The Intelligence of the Cosmos

The New Answers and the Challenge

Reconciling Science and Spirituality with Life

Garry Jacobs

Life is the meeting place between the objective external world in which we live and the subjective inner world of consciousness with which we experience it and by which we act on it. Therefore, life is the ultimate litmus test for knowledge. In spite of the remarkable, unprecedented achievements of physical science and technology, we still find ourselves groping blindly for solutions to the most basic problems of life—peace, political stability, economic security, social harmony, cultural relations, psychological fulfillment, and spiritual purpose. Unless and until we learn how to master these problems, all our scientific knowledge and technological mastery of the external material world in which we live—the subatomic microcosm and the intergalactic macrocosm—are inadequate. So too, mind’s quest for spiritual knowledge of inner and higher states of consciousness is incomplete unless it teaches us how to live fully in peace, harmony, and mutuality with our own selves and other people. Science urges us to seek that knowledge in the future by more rapid technological advancement. Spiritual traditions counsel us to rediscover the significance of ancient wisdom. Science and spirituality grope from two different poles of existence toward the same goal, and very likely the fulfillment of each lies in the meeting point between the material and spiritual planes of existence that we know as Life. The knowledge humanity needs most is that which will provide complete, fulfilled, and ever-increasing mastery and self-mastery of both the inner and the outer domains of our existence. Knowledge is power and true knowledge is power for the perfection of ourselves and for the world we live in.

The New Answers and the New Paradigm

Ervin Laszlo’s essential insights, based on the new paradigm he is enunciating, respond to fundamental questions about the nature of reality and the destiny of human beings. Do we live in a meaningless universe governed by random chance and blind necessity, or is there purposefulness in nature? Does the evolution of the physical universe, life-forms, and consciousness have a direction and goal, or is it simply the result of an infinite number of infinitesimal accidents? If chance governs all, how can we explain the remarkable precision, orderliness, and purposefulness found in physical forms, living species, and conscious mentality? If the ultimate nature of reality is inanimate, inconscient material substance, how can we explain the emergence of animate, subconscious life-forms and conscious mental self-awareness? If evolution results in the emergence of life and consciousness from dumb material substance, then what does it tell us about the fundamental nature of matter in which life and consciousness are in some sense involved and potential?

These are questions that in various forms have perplexed humanity and been debated without resolution for millennia. But no matter how difficult to answer in terms satisfying to science, religion, and personal experience, their profound relevance to humanity justifies every attempt at reconciliation. For our answer to these questions determines the meaning of our existence, the validity of our quest for knowledge and truth, the value of goodness, love, and everything else we cherish as human beings.

Laszlo’s answer integrates insights from science, philosophy, and spiritual experience. Throughout history these three ways of knowing have been the primary means by which humanity has sought knowledge of the unknown, complemented by the inspirations of poets, musicians, and artists giving expression to inexpressible mysteries of existence. In different periods and places each of these powers of consciousness has assumed a dominant influence over the others and often leveraged its preeminent position to discredit, suppress, or reject alternative ways of approaching reality. Today we live in a schizophrenic age in which unprecedented scientific knowledge and technological mastery of the external, physical world overshadow and threaten to efface fundamental insights regarding the deepest and highest reaches of human experience.

Our self-ignorance seems to grow in proportion to the growth of our scientific knowledge. The deeper we delve into the mysteries of material nature, the more we become aware of the inadequacy of objective, physical principles and processes to explain the organic unity of individual consciousness and human experience. Everywhere we find evidence of an increasing sense of alienation and loss of harmony with ourselves, other people, and nature. An unrivalled sense of power and growing sense of impotence coexist side by side. A balanced attempt to reconcile and integrate diverse viewpoints of reality is of greatest importance to heal the gaping holes in our self-knowledge and relationship with the world around us. Efforts of this kind deserve the same respect as that accorded to the efforts of modern science to perceive hidden patterns and relationships in the material world.

As a member of an international think tank of scientists, artists, diplomats, and civil society leaders, I am continuously involved in efforts to understand and reconcile different ways of knowing. I am often surprised by the facility with which the most extraordinary human experiences are logically reduced to chemical and electrical events by idealistic, deeply feeling individuals, unaware of the inherent contradiction between the materialist hypothesis and the affirmation of nonmaterial values such as freedom, love, dignity, and truth. For if, indeed, we are nothing but complex formations of material substance, there can be no ultimate significance to our lives, the truths we affirm, or the values we cherish. I am equally surprised by the frequency and facility with which distinguished physicists and biologists affirm the ultimate importance of intangible spiritual values and ideals far beyond the purview of physical science. Science and spiritual experience remain two real, but separate, domains in search of a synthesis. Confronted with such a diversity of perspective, what I write here necessarily represents my own personal views and effort at reconciliation.

Having said that, this book affirms meaning in the patterns of cosmic evolution, and Laszlo discovers a movement of superconvergence between the cosmic macrocosm and the microcosm of conscious human experience. He begins his essay by pointing to a fundamental truth of existence that is confirmed by both science and spirituality. As modern physics discovered a century ago and the Vedantic sages realized thousands of years earlier through personal experience, all the forms and objects that constitute the material world resolve themselves at a more fundamental level into forms of energy, vibrations of a more ethereal, less material reality. During the twentieth century, science progressed very far in deciphering the forces that constitute material forms and govern their interconversion. It has rejected the evidence of the physical senses in favor of the mathematical precision of abstract equations. Yet it clings to the unproven and unprovable hypothesis that this fundamental energy is the sole and ultimate basis of existence.

Limits to Rationality

Laszlo effectively challenges this position. He argues convincingly that the available evidence, even the evidence of physical science, is not adequately explained by a purely material hypothesis regarding the nature of reality. While he may not provide all the answers, he certainly asks the most fundamental questions. He urges us to consider whether there is an alternative hypothesis that is equally or more logical and consistent with the facts. He invites us to discard the prevailing conventional wisdom in favor of a truly rational exploration of possibilities, while at the same time reminding us that rationality has its limits. At the lower end of the spectrum, psychology, sociology, and other social sciences confirm that we are not, or not yet, truly rational beings. Our attempts at rationality are invariably accompanied by heuristic errors, social constructions of knowledge, personal preference, prejudice, superstition, and the limitations of our own cultural and egoistic perspectives. Nor is science an exception. It too rests on a social construction of reality, rigorously enforced. Whatever our capacity for reason, both history and contemporary events testify to our continued insistence on beliefs and behaviors inconsistent with rationality. We have largely liberated ourselves from unquestioned faith in the sanctity of religious dogma, only to resurrect it in new form as the sanctity of scientific theory.

At the higher end of the rationality spectrum, great scientists unanimously testify to the fact that rationality itself has its limits. Evidence abounds that the greatest scientific discoveries have been the result of intuitive rather than linear, rational mental processes.^*40 Even mathematics, the queen of rational sciences, is founded on insight and intuition. “What then is mathematics if it is not a unique, rigorous, logical structure? It is a series of great intuitions carefully sifted, and organized by the logic men are willing and able to apply at any time.”^†41

The scientific method has proven highly effective for falsifying hypotheses, but very rarely has it been the source of the new knowledge that it is used to validate. Insight and intuition have been the principal sources of knowledge, both scientific and spiritual. They usually arise only after the mind exhausts its capacity for rational analysis and falls silent. Their processes remain beyond explanation by reason and validation by the scientific method.

These limits to rationality at both ends of the spectrum present a perplexing dilemma to anyone seeking to explore knowledge beyond the reach of physical science. To those who cling to the sense of certainty and security offered by contemporary scientific thought, these limits pose a disconcerting threat. Those who understand the limitations of mental cognition regard it as good counsel for open-mindedness, tolerance, and humility.

Unresolved Issues

Laszlo generously recognizes the greatest achievements of modern science, but draws on their evidence to frame some alternative conclusions that run counter to the trend of contemporary, materialist thought. He points to the three great unresolved issues of science: the origin of the universe or what existed before the Big Bang, the origin of unicellular life, and the nature of mind and consciousness. Science seeks to explain all three as extraordinary events—singularities—that are so statistically improbable that they may have occurred only once in the entire history of our universe. He goes further by citing the extraordinary improbability governing the cosmic constants that are essential to support life in the universe. Here he does a great service by exposing the points at which science morphs into speculative philosophy without openly acknowledging the transition. The anthropomorphic hypothesis that humanity happens to live in a universe that is suitable for life simply because it is the only one in which human life could thrive is pure philosophical speculation disguised as theory. Leading physicists have affirmed that the same is true of many of the postulates of string theory.^*42

The problem of life is equally perplexing. For even if simple organic molecules can form spontaneously from their constituent elements and join together under certain physical conditions, that does not prove the highly improbable hypothesis that life actually arose in this fashion. The materialist postulate appears plausible only so long as we refuse to consider alternative explanations. It requires a huge leap of speculative faith to assert that the random self-assembly of increasingly complex molecules is sufficient to explain the emergence of increasingly complex life-forms exhibiting characteristics of self-organization and self-replication according to principles that run counter to the laws of entropy governing purely material phenomena. Life progresses from lower to higher levels of order and organization, while matter moves in the other direction. The fact that we accept these premises as not only logical but plausible only reflects the degree to which the materialist hypothesis has been implicitly accepted as the sole premise on which a rational view of reality can be fashioned.

But it is when it comes to the problem of consciousness that the material hypothesis is found most wanting. The case supporting the equivalence of mental consciousness with the activities of the physical brain is far from convincing. It may be true that our conscious functions are related to centers and activities in the brain, but that does not prove causality. Even if compelling evidence were to exist with respect to basic sensory and memory functions similar to those now exhibited by computers, it requires a huge leap of speculative imagination to reduce the highest, most rarefied experiences of consciousness—the quest for truth, the thirst for immortality, the insatiable joy of freedom, and the intuition of perfect love—to purely physical processes, no matter how complex the network of neurons or the regulatory feedback mechanisms. To imagine that clay and sand have given rise to conscious, feeling, aspiring human beings over so many millions of years is an act of speculative philosophy, not scientific fact. Once again, it is only the unwillingness to examine alternative hypotheses that compels us to work on this untenable and unprovable premise.

Contemporary science has sought to address this paucity of evidence by terming the evolution of animate, subconscious life as an emergent property of inanimate, insensible, inconscient matter and the evolution of self-conscious mentality as an emergent property of subconscious life. But coining a scientific term to describe something inexplicable and unprovable by present knowledge cannot pass for a rational explanation. Terms such as emergence and self-organization are merely descriptions, not explanations.

Atheism, agnosticism, and materialism have performed a great service over the past few centuries in cleansing spiritual knowledge from dogma and superstition. Similarly, pointing out the speculations, inconsistencies, and contradictions implicit in many prevailing scientific viewpoints is an equally great service to the progress of knowledge. It is not necessary for us to conceive or accept an alternative hypothesis before we concede that current premises are purely speculative. What is needed is an open-minded, relentless inquiry and search for more plausible explanations.

Alternative Hypotheses

Laszlo argues that these unresolved issues justify a reevaluation of the fundamental premises on which modern science is based. As long as the founding premises are unproven, is it not rational and even necessary that we explore the alternatives? Here he draws on philosophy and spiritual experience to put forth an alternative hypothesis. His premise is similar to that of the Vedanta, that the fundamental nature of reality is a field of pure consciousness. Modern science has discovered that material forms are actually vibrations of a more subtle and invisible energy that our senses perceive as solid, physical forms. Laszlo argues that both the material forms and the energy of which they are constituted are themselves perceptible, measurable vibrations of the more subtle and universal Akashic field, informed by consciousness. Consciousness manifests as sensation, cognition, and self-awareness that emerge in the progressive evolution of the lower and the higher forms of life.

From the vantage point of materialism, this explanation appears far-fetched for the simple reason that it cannot be confirmed by the physical methods applied by modern science. But that only leads to an obvious conclusion that was fully apparent to the thinkers and scientists of the Enlightenment. Modern experimental science was only conceived and developed as a method applicable to external material objects and forces. Its pioneers never imagined that this methodology would be applied in an attempt to explain the nature of life, mind, and spiritual experience.

Evidence for the New Answers to the Nature of Consciousness

The new answer to the nature of consciousness query is equally rational and consistent with all the known observations of modern science. In fact, more so. Because it does not depend on an extraordinary series of singularities to explain the physical, biological, and mental evolution of matter, life, and mind. For if the fundamental reality is pure consciousness somehow involved and concealed in material form, then its progressive manifestation and expression through higher and higher forms would be natural and inevitable. Already science acknowledges that the most solid, stable material forms are actually constituted of physically detectable energy vibrations. It is only one more step to concede that the energy vibrations we detect physically may in turn be manifestations of a more subtle reality that has the property of consciousness. In that case the inherent orderliness, organization, and purposefulness we find everywhere in Nature are readily explained. In that case, life would be a manifestation of this consciousness building up biological forms just the way physical energy builds up material forms. The gradations of mental experience we find in higher animals and human beings would represent the progressive manifestation of this inherent consciousness. The view of brain as a physical receiver through which mental consciousness expresses, rather than a generator of consciousness, is equally consistent with observable scientific facts that find a correlation between brain function and human perception, emotion, and consciousness.

This viewpoint is equally or more logically consistent and plausible than the materialist hypothesis. Moreover, it is supported by the testimony of our own self-experience as human beings. For no matter what science may postulate, human beings intuitively experience their own thoughts, feelings, emotions, aspirations, and values as real in themselves and not merely expressions of physiological processes. As Schrödinger put it, “The scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information . . . [but] it cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. So, in brief, we do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us . . . the scientific worldview contains of itself . . . not a word about our own ultimate scope or destination.”^*43

Scientific evidence, logical consistency, and subjective personal experience do not constitute proof. They only present a compelling justification for examining all the available evidence through appropriate means. Therefore, Laszlo draws on the testimony of spiritual traditions around the world over thousands of years in support of this hypothesis. He cites also recent testimony of those who have undergone near-death experiences. Although his approach to these controversial issues is interesting, it is unlikely to be convincing or accepted as adequate evidence by those who have not had direct experiences of this type. But it should be sufficiently substantial and consistent to demand an open-minded consideration rather than a cynical rejection.

Objectivity and Subjectivity

Resolution of the conflict between these two contradictory views of reality is rooted in the fact that all objective knowledge is the result of subjective processes of cognition. Science studies the objective field of external reality. Spirituality studies the subjective field of psychological self-experience. But all knowledgeable, even scientific knowledge of external material phenomena involves a subjective process of perception, mental interpretation, social and psychological construction of reality. “Our perception of reality is largely modelled from beliefs and assumptions that are typical of the society and culture to which we belong. What we know, what we consider true and right, the behaviors we adopt, are all influenced by the social/cultural environment in which we live. This process happens through the internalization of a ‘reality’ that occurs during the socialization process.”^*44

The insistence on pursuing a purely materialist explanation for life and consciousness is a consequence of the phenomenal success of early science in discovering the processes of material nature. A long, wandering detour over several centuries from the dawn of the Enlightenment to the present day has led us to deny the essence of our own most intimately human experiences. In their first turn away from the sanctity of religious dogma, the thinkers of the Enlightenment sought for an external, objective means to determine truths about the external material world in which they lived. They relied on acute observation, repetitive verification, measurement, and mathematics as instruments well suited for the study of objective physical phenomena. They sought to eliminate the intrusion of corrupting influences such as personal preference, prejudice, religious belief, and prevailing social conceptions. As a result, they developed an impartial, impersonal objective scientific method that proved highly effective for the study of external material objects. The method was objective in the sense that it dealt with objects and related phenomena that could be observed and measured through objective means externally. Enlightenment thinkers such as Newton and Descartes did not believe or assume that all aspects of reality could be studied through the scientific method or ultimately be reduced to a purely material basis. In devising a method to minimize the intrusion of personal preference, they never intended to deny the existence or validity of subjective dimensions of reality and self-experience or to assert that these nonmaterial realms could be adequately studied and explained in purely physical terms.

In later centuries, the very notion of objectivity underwent a subtle shift in meaning. It began as the study of the external world of objects, because that alone lent itself to collective study by objective means, and gradually morphed into the assertion that only the objective, external world is fully real and all else is subjective interpretation or distortion of reality. As Canadian mathematician William Byers explains it, “The word ‘objective’ has two distinct meanings: independent of personal opinions or impartial; and independent of mind. Science confuses these two meanings.”^*45 The essence of science is the pursuit of knowledge that is free from prejudice and personal bias, but knowledge can never be free from subjectivity. There is no knowledge of the objective world that does not involve subjective processes of consciousness. All knowledge is subjective. Instead of confining its meaning to the study of material nature by impartial means, positivism asserted that only that which can be observed materially and studied as external object is real. All else is not merely subject to preference and prejudice but nonexistent or merely a derivation from material phenomena. Such a premise may be valid in philosophy, for philosophy admits of an unlimited number of diverse viewpoints. But it has no rational scientific validity.

The Evolution of Consciousness

Laszlo’s thesis is that the universe is a progressive manifestation of consciousness that is evolving toward supercoherence. Evolution is a double movement. Externally, it expresses in the evolution of physical and biological forms studied by science. Internally, the evolution of these forms is driven by and expresses an evolution of consciousness that seeks higher forms through which to more fully express its inherent powers.

The evolution of coherent systems and the evolution of consciousness are complementary aspects of a unitary evolutionary process. Physics charts the physical evolution from infinitesimal atoms and molecules to the solar systems, galaxies, and other bodies that populate the known universe. Biology charts the biological evolution from infinitesimal, unicellular life-forms to the most complex, adaptive human species. We also see clear evidence of the evolutionary progression of mental capacities from the subconscient sensitivity and responsiveness of plants to the instinctive behaviors prevalent in the animal kingdom to the mentally conscious and self-conscious awareness of human beings, with our capacity for complex language, abstract thinking, and self-reflection. Cosmic evolution proceeds toward higher levels of organization, complexity, adaptability, and knowledge of self and the world. The expressions of consciousness observed in life-forms do not necessarily reveal the characteristics of consciousness itself, only its power for manifestation. If that manifestation is progressive, there is no reason to think that it has reached its natural limits or that life and mind as we know them are its highest term. For both life and mind are obviously limited, imperfect phenomena that are still in the process of evolving.

If sentient animate life can emerge out of matter and conscious mentality can emerge out of subconscious life, it is reasonable to postulate that higher forms of consciousness may yet evolve out of our mental consciousness. The ultimate nature of consciousness may differ as much from our present mental experience as our mental experience differs from the awareness of lower animals and plants. Supercoherence may be another term for a perfect manifestation of the full powers of that consciousness. This possibility is confirmed by the phenomenon of genius, the testimony of great scientists and artists, and the massive historical record of spiritual experience, as described below by Sri Aurobindo.

We speak of the evolution of Life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life, because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness. And then there seems to be little objection to a further step in the series and the admission that mental consciousness may itself be only a form and veil of higher states which are beyond Mind. In that case, the unconquerable impulse of man toward God, Light, Bliss, Freedom, Immortality presents itself in its right place in the chain as simply the imperative impulse by which Nature is seeking to evolve beyond Mind . . . ^*46

This hypothesis is too consistent with the observable facts and our own subjective self-experience to be rejected simply because it cannot be proven through the methods of physical science. Our own self-experience testifies to the existence of all three levels in our own consciousness: our experience of our bodies and physiological processes, of our desires and emotions, and of our thoughts. The effort to study the physiological correlates of this self-experience is a useful field of scientific study that can provide insight into the interaction between these three modes of our being. But the insistence on reducing all self-experience to its physiological correlates is not justified by reason, evidence, or self-experience. “If pushed to its extreme, it would give to a stone or a plum pudding, a greater reality and to thought, love, courage, genius, greatness, the human soul and mind facing an obscure and dangerous world and getting mastery over it an inferior dependent reality.”^†47

Merely stating an alternative hypothesis does not validate it. Indeed, it raises further questions that require serious consideration. Foremost are the inherent reason and the fundamental process by which an infinite universal consciousness could render itself involved or self-absorbed in apparently inanimate material forms and then progressively evolve out of that self-concealed status to manifest the rising forms of life and consciousness we find in the universe. The purpose, rationale, mechanism, and process of this evolutionary process is examined in depth by Sri Aurobindo.^*48

Individuality

A glaring inadequacy of modern science has been its dealing with the phenomenon of conscious individuality. For science is the study of types, common characteristics, and unvarying universal laws. It is well suited for the classification of the elements in the periodic table, the classification of biological forms by phyla, genus, and species, and countless other typal phenomena. But when it comes to conscious human beings, the limitations of classification, universal law, mathematical precision, and statistical probability become evident. Nature is regarded by science as an inconscient energy that is entirely impersonal. The emergence of consciousness and the creation of personality appear to it as an inexplicable mystery.

The conscious individual is the pinnacle of the evolution of life and consciousness. The individual is the most complex phenomenon in the known universe. True individuality as described by eminent psychologists such as Jung, Maslow, and Rogers represents the highest stage in the organization of human personality. The individual is also the catalyst for all the advances of the social collective. Creative, pioneering individuals are the source of the new ideas, discoveries, inventions, and organizations that enable society to enhance its power for defense, production, transport, communication, science, technological innovation, trade, education, governance, social welfare, artistic excellence, and entertainment.

The development of Individuality is the key to human progress in the past, present, and future. All the great discoveries and developments of the past have resulted from the creative, divergent, original inspirations and actions of individual members of the group who dared to think and act differently than others, to discover, invent, and innovate new ideas, tools, technologies, organizations, and activities that have been subsequently adopted by the collective and incorporated into the mainstream of social existence. To reduce the most remarkable phenomena in the universe to a series of mechanical processes and chance events requires an act of blind faith contrary to our highest reason and self-experience.

Individuality is the seed from which human aspiration arises initially as a tiny spark, then evolves progressively in strength into a firm will for personal accomplishment and at its highest into a flame for the collective advancement of humanity. Individuality represents the distilled essence of power in each human being for highest accomplishment both for himself and for humanity. Society is the infinite; the individual is the infinitesimal. With the right strategy, the individual can tap at any point and release the infinite power of the society.

All our knowledge is incomplete and inadequate unless it reveals to us the process and method for development of this extraordinary creative capacity of consciousness in ourselves and in others. All the achievements of modern science with its reliance on material processes are inadequate to explain the phenomenon of conscious individuality, which is the most intimate and precious attribute of our humanness. Science will come of age and cross the boundaries into a new age of knowledge when it rejects the limitations of the implicit assumptions on which it is currently founded and seeks to openly explore on its own terms the wonders and mysteries of the evolutionary adventure of consciousness.

Our Knowledge of Life

The greatest discoveries of both science and spirituality have been those that reconcile and integrate phenomena that were previously believed to be independent or even contradictory to one another. Thus, Newton reconciled the principles of inertia and movement, Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism, Einstein discovered the formulas relating matter and energy, space and time.^*49

Scientific knowledge of the physical plane, abstract philosophical mental knowledge, and direct inner spiritual experience all have played valuable roles in the evolution of human consciousness. Science confirms the existence of immutable, universal physical laws of Nature. Spirituality affirms the wisdom of universal and eternal values and subjective self-experience. But neither by itself is adequate to provide the mastery and self-mastery we seek for fullness of being in life. Laszlo argues that the universal laws are not merely accidental, but rather expressions of a concealed evolutionary intention. He also argues that these spiritual values are not merely useful ethical principles, but rather expressions of a higher, yet to be realized spiritual consciousness of reality. Humanity needs a knowledge that combines, reconciles, integrates, and transcends them both.

Neither science nor spirituality has given us the complete knowledge needed to fully understand and live life in its vibrant, organic fullness. Spirituality has been so self-absorbed in the experience of fundamental oneness that it often loses sight of the universal manifestations of that oneness. “We perceive that in the Indian ascetic ideal the great Vedantic formula, ‘One without a second,’ has not often been read sufficiently in the light of that other formula equally imperative, ‘All this is the Brahman.’”^†50 Similarly, science has been so self-absorbed in the study of material phenomena that it has lost sight of other planes of experience that are equally real and valid and in one sense even more fundamental. The attempt of philosophy in its turn to reconcile and synthesize these two poles through ingenious mental constructions of reality has failed to attain either the vivid heights of spiritual experience or the solid concreteness of matter, leaving us instead in a flatland of abstractions.

Perhaps both extremes, materialism and asceticism, have been necessary to explore the opposite polar ends of the full spectrum of reality. The schism between science and spirituality is symptomatic of the division between our inner subjective world of self-experience and the outer physical world in which we live and act. Life is the testing ground on which science and spirituality meet. By life, I refer to the field of conscious experience by which human beings strive to survive, grow, develop, and evolve. We need a knowledge that will enable us to make the right decisions and achieve the right results in all our actions, great and small. We need a knowledge that gives us the right sense of timing, measure, and proportion. We need a knowledge that leads to fullness of inner being and effective power of outer action. The efficacy of our knowledge is not ultimately to be demonstrated in a laboratory or a factory or in the meditations of spiritual contemplation, but in our capacity for mastery in the field of life in which the inner and outer, objective and subjective, material and spiritual meet in our awareness, experience, and actions as conscious beings.

The solution cannot be arrived at by a mental resolution or reconciliation, or at least not by that alone. It requires us to discover the knowledge of the correspondence between our inner consciousness and outer circumstances, which is the hallmark of wisdom. That knowledge reveals to us the great discovery of the direct power of consciousness over life and the means by which changes in our consciousness can result in change in our lives and in the life of the world around us. The conscious individual is the point of reconciliation between matter and spirit and the pioneer of evolving consciousness in the universe. The possession of that knowledge and power will be the climax of humanity’s ascent from the animal and the fulfillment of the human aspiration for inner spiritual perfection and perfection in outer life. The destiny of science and spirituality is to achieve a reunification of inner and outer knowledge in a living synthesis. That knowledge will reveal the true character of life depicted by great writers such as Shakespeare and the power to make life respond.

Laszlo provides an answer to two of the most fundamental questions that have preoccupied and perplexed humanity through history. Yet if the prevailing hypotheses of modern science are correct, then any answer to these questions is inconsequential and irrelevant. For if matter and material energy are the fundamental reality and if that reality is solely governed by the twin gods of chance and necessity—as assumed by current evolutionary theory—these questions have no meaning or answer whatsoever. In that case, human beings are merely an agglomeration of material elements formed by accident according to some arbitrary laws and constants of physical nature. Then life is merely a manifestation of electrical and chemical processes and the will to live merely an appearance, for then there is no will in material nature other than chance and necessity. Then consciousness is merely an artifact of material processes, the sense of self and self-awareness a mere illusion, and neither scientist nor scientific knowledge has any real significance or validity. To inquire regarding purpose in this case is meaningless because nothing has any purpose in the universe.

This conclusion is diametrically opposite to our experience as human beings. For will, consciousness, and purposefulness are the very essence of human experience. The will to live, grow, enjoy, discover, know, love, and create has been the highest aspiration of humanity throughout history. Reason, insight, intuition, and self-experience reject this conclusion as fallacious and born of false premises, a too narrow and limited conception of knowledge born of an excessive preoccupation with only the physical dimension of reality and confined to the most physical appearances of nature.

Laszlo presents an alternative hypothesis and an alternative answer based on a broader conception of reality and a more comprehensive and integral conception of knowledge. His hypothesis affirms not only the purposefulness and validity of human experience, but the purposefulness of the universe as the venue for the evolution of individual consciousness by cosmic consciousness. His view affirms our highest aspirations and deepest intuitions regarding the phenomena of life, consciousness, will, intention, and purposefulness—both at the individual and at the universal level.

Laszlo’s facts and arguments do not and cannot disprove the material hypothesis any more than physical science can disprove or invalidate spiritual experience. But what they can do is to make us pause and seriously reconsider the fundamental premises on which present knowledge is based, and point the way to the boundaries beyond which science is destined to evolve in its continued quest for answers to the ultimate questions of human existence. Laszlo’s essay provides the theoretical foundation for a science of life and human fulfillment, with matter as its building blocks, consciousness as its creative motive power, the individual as the key to human and cosmic evolution, and our aspiration as the ultimate determinant of human destiny.