The Self, Science, and Religion
Anna F. Lemkow
Lately, I have been ruminating on the nature and meaning of the word “self,” and
more particularly, on such notions as “self,” “no-self,” “Self,” and “SELF.” I have also been
thinking about the genesis of predominant modern mindsets or “isms,” and their impact on
people's self-identity. Self is an indispensable word in our vocabulary. It is irreplaceable as a
prefix in the numerous self-reflexive terms— self-consciousness, self-awareness, selfknowledge, and so on. Significantly, these self-reflexive terms pertain to and arise in all
major realms of thought, i.e. science, religion, philosophy, and even in Theosophy.
What has become apparent to me is that much of the turmoil of the modern world
arises from the bitter conflict between the two fields that have come to be known as modern
science and religion and how they relate to Self. The bridging of these two great domains
would be a boon for humanity and by the evidence shown, human consciousness is
inexorably, if unevenly, evolving toward this sought after integration.
How We Define the Self
The common understanding in many fields of knowledge is that the nature of our Self
is composite; that is, the different constituents of our makeup correspond with and serve as
our means of contact with different levels of reality.
Huston Smith, renowned explorer of comparative religion, displays in his book, Why
Religion Matters, an extraordinary mandala that depicts this universal vision of the
relationship between reality and selfhood. Smith's mandala includes all the major religious
traditions: namely, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and the Chinese
complex of religions. The mandala indicates the four major levels of reality and the
corresponding four levels of selfhood for each of them. In Christianity, the four levels of
selfhood—body, mind, soul, and spirit—are correlated with nature, angels or demons, Christ,
and Godhead, respectively. Hinduism, to take another example, posits the gross body, the
subtle body, the causal body, and atma or turiya which correspond respectively to prakriti,
deva lokas, Saguna Brahman (God attributes) and Nirguna Brahman (ultimate infinite,
formless, Godhead)—the latter two levels of deity reflect the exoteric and the esoteric stream,
respectively, found in each world religion.
Concerning the nature of reality, Smith points out that its "domains are not identical in
worth…. Being infinite, the Godhead is more complete than God . . . who in turn is more
important than [this world] " (225). The mandala accords, not surprisingly, with the
millennial idea of the Great Chain of Being—the idea that reality is a hierarchy of interwoven
levels of consciousness reaching from matter to body to mind to soul to the ultimate divine
source.
The Anatman or no-self doctrine of Buddhism is illuminating. What it maintains is
that the small or personal ego is impermanent—that it has no abiding reality—that it is empty
of any self-nature. John Engler, who is a Buddhist and a trained psychologist, states in Paths
Beyond Ego that: “in both psychologies the sense of being the same “self” in time, in place,
and across states of consciousness is conceived as something that is not innate in personality,
not inherent but that evolves developmentally. . . [It] is actually an internalized image, a
composite representation, constructed by a selective and imaginative ‘remembering’ of past
encounters with the object world… [it] is viewed as being constructed anew from moment to
moment” (118).
Mahayana Buddhism, unlike Theravada Buddhism, while similarly denying the small
ego, strongly affirms that a true self is discoverable, though only after a prolonged and
painful inner search. Robert Thurman of Columbia University (who studied Tibetan
Buddhism with the Dalai Lama) describes the discovery as liberating. It liberates one from
the need to shore up the small ego, the false entity and its false pretensions, and from the need
to be somebody instead of just being. Thurman characterizes the true self as boundless and
intimately connected to the entire universe.
Lama Anagarika Govinda, a gifted expositor of Tibetan mysticism, stated in Creative
Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness: "When the Buddha put the annata-idea in
the center of his teaching he took the decisive step from a static to a dynamic view of the
world, from an emphasis on “being” to an emphasis on “becoming,” from the concept of an
unchangeable, permanent “I” (ego) to the realization of the interdependence of all forms and
aspects of life and the capacity of the individual to grow beyond himself and his self-created
limitations" (6).
Interestingly, both Buddhism and contemporary psychoanalysis study the self but they
study two different levels of the self. The goal of both is the easing of human suffering, yet
for Buddhism this goal is radical transformation of consciousness, while for psychoanalysis
the aim is to eliminate neurotic suffering that may and often stems from early childhood
traumas and distortions. Each system duly has its own method. Buddhism advocates
meditative practice, while psychoanalysis tries to strengthen the ego. (Paradoxically, the
personal ego—that dubious or false entity—must nevertheless be strengthened before it is
reduced to size.) The two systems are complementary.
Buddhist Theosophist, Christmas Humphreys distinguishes three main levels of
selfhood in Studies in the Middle Way: Atma—the SELF—which shines on all and is the
property of no one; the Self, which moves from life to life—a continuous, complex, changing
flow—“a becoming, a ceaseless growth, an endless process of becoming what it really is”
(47), and the self, the personality which “acquires experience through the five senses and the
mind, and therefore provides a workshop for the growth of character” (46). The acquired
experience is absorbed by the Self and is then stored in memory. Another way this
configuration has been interpreted is thus: the SELF is both the (causal) top rung of the ladder
in the spectrum of consciousness and that of which all the rungs are constituted.
H. P. Blavatsky remarked in The Key to Theosophy that the SELF or Higher Self, as
she called it, can never be objective for it is Atma, which is really Brahma, the Absolute, and
is indistinguishable from it. Blavatsky refers to it at times as "the God within us," and as “our
Father in Secret.” She also borrows the term “oversoul” from the great American
transcendentalist philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson. It occurs, notably, in the Proem to The
Secret Doctrine: "The Secret Doctrine teaches...The fundamental identity of all Souls with the
Universal Oversoul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root... " (13).
Ken Wilber writes in his book Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution:
"In philosophy a general distinction is made between the empirical ego, which is the self
insofar as it can be an object of awareness and introspection, and the Pure Ego or
transcendental Ego which is pure subjectivity (or the observing Self), which can never be
seen as an object of any sort. In this regard, the pure Ego is virtually identical with what the
Hindus call Atman or the pure Witness that itself is never witnessed—is never an object—but
contains all objects in itself" (227).
Psychologies of East and West allude to the process of decentering from the empirical
ego. Wilber, a Zen Buddhist, remarks that the more we decenter from that ego, the closer we
approach "an intuition of the very Divine as one’s very Self . . . . The completely decentered
self is the all-embracing Self (as Zen would say, the Self that is no-self)" (231).
Some of us today have begun to de-center from the personal self or the small ego to
some degree. When we stand back and look at ourselves somewhat objectively—we notice
negative emotions and obsessive concern with ourselves—i.e., we begin to notice a kind of
I/me divide.
A related perception that some of us have is that one's truer identity, whatever it is, is
scarcely captured in any conventional way, e.g., by such data as place and religion of birth,
skin color, sex, address, occupation, affiliations, and any other personal attributes. Using
myself as an example, I am white, female, of Russian-Jewish extraction, a United
States/Canadian citizen, a planetary citizen, a life member of the Theosophical Society, but I
often feel that I am somehow different from and also more than the sum of these personal
attributes.
It is not, I believe, that our personal particulars are insignificant. On the contrary, they
are potent and dynamic. They are the rich soil of our present incarnations. Moreover, it is the
unique combination of personal attributes that makes each individual unique. No one could be
mistaken for someone else no matter how much change they undergo in body and mind
during the course of a lifetime. And yet, none of one's personal attributes are absolute.
Significantly innumerable individuals across time and culture have reported having a
spontaneous glimpse of a Self totally unrelated to their biographical history. I have
experienced such a glimpse at least once; I felt a oneness with everything and everyone, a
blissful sense of total self-acceptance as well as an acceptance and love of everyone else. I
wish to not forget this peak experience because it is an illuminating peek at my true nature.
Modern Rationalism: The Self Dumbed Down
We know that evolution is an incontrovertible fact; even just how it happened and
how it proceeds are a matter of controversy. Its course appears unpredictable. Take what
happened to the notion of Self in recent centuries by a passage from The Passion of the
Western Mind by the historian Richard Tarnas:
Science replaced religion as preeminent intellectual authority, as definer,
judge, and guardian of the cultural world view. Human reason and empirical
observation replaced theological doctrine and scriptural revelation as the principal
means for comprehending the universe. Conceptions involving a transcendent reality
were increasingly regarded as beyond the competence of human knowledge. While
modern rationalism suggested and eventually affirmed and based itself upon the
conception of man as the highest or ultimate intelligence, modem empiricism did the
same for the conception of the material world as the essential or only reality—i.e.
secular humanism and scientific materialism, respectively. (286)
The advent of modern science was a watershed in human history that ushered in a
wealth of new truths and discoveries. In its wake, the self-evolution of consciousness
paradoxically seemed to take a regressive turn—i.e., obscuration, at least for many and for the
time being, of the transrational (transpersonal, contemplative, mystical) levels of
consciousness.
Scientific materialism states that matter-energy is the only reality, that only matter
exists and that consciousness is merely an epiphenomenon that somehow issues from the
physical brain. If there were no brain, the argument goes, there would be no such thing as
sentience or consciousness. Scientific materialism is still the official view of modern science,
notwithstanding that it is scientifically obsolete. It was, in effect, refuted as early as the
twentieth century upon the discovery of the dynamic nature of matter, whereupon the cosmos
ceased to look like a dead machine and began to look instead like a great thought or like
mindstuff. Science could no longer claim to know matter. The mystery has deepened—even a
subatomic particle can display instant correlation or synchronization of events over long
distances; the finding known as non-locality.
Yet self-evolution continues. At the frontiers of science, theorists are vigorously
searching for unified theories—in all disciplines. There are some theories that promise or
claim to unify matter, life, and mind. But the materialistic/mechanistic view remains
entrenched among many conventional scientists and other mechanistically-minded thinkers.
In a recent article on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times, Daniel C. Dennett, the wellknown American philosopher, argues passionately that while nature displays "breathtakingly
ingenious designs," these have all, including the development of the eye, been generated by
processes that are themselves without purpose and without intelligence. The long-inculcated
mechanistic/materialistic view, with its disavowal of purpose in nature, can apparently
produce downright irrationality even in some philosophers although it is only rational to see
machines as devoid of rationality! Nature in fact displays countless and remarkable examples
of purpose and a number of examples are cited in my book, The Wholeness Principle:
Dynamics of Unity within Science.
A widely influential “ism” related to empirical science that scientists do not
necessarily claim is scientism. Scientism holds that what science does not discover is not true.
As Huston Smith remarks in The Way Things Are, this stance "reduces the stature of the
human self. The highest reaches of humanity are beheaded, you might say, by a single stroke
of the scientistic sword" (270). Smith calls scientism "tunnel vision." He documents its
pervasiveness in academia. Wilber often expatiates on what he calls flatland (reflecting the
absence of the vertical dimension of consciousness). Plato’s metaphor, remember, was the
cave.
Another “ism” we can look at is secular humanism. According to Frederick Edwords
of the American Humanist Association, in his article “What Is Humanism?” there are many
types of humanism, including cultural, secular, and religious humanism. All types of
humanism place reliance alone on "human means for comprehending reality . . . [making] no
claims to possess or have access to supposed transcendent knowledge." Religious humanism,
states Edwords, regards religion as "functional," (i.e., pragmatic)—it “serves the personal and
social needs of a group of people sharing the same philosophical world view.” “Secular and
Religious humanists both share the same worldview and the same basic principles.” Edwords
quotes the definition of modern humanism of Corliss Lamont, its chief proponent: “a
naturalistic philosophy that rejects all supernaturalism and relies primarily upon reason and
science, democracy and human compassion.”
While secular humanism is greatly superior to pure mechanism, some strains of it lack
awareness of the Self and its incomparably richer transrational experience. Yet, secular
humanists or modern rationalists seem to constitute the major segment of the population of
the Western world. Many scientists fall into this category, as do many academicians, and
liberals.
Another prominent “ism” of our time is of course religious fundamentalism. Islamic
fundamentalism is resurging strongly just now. Common to religious fundamentalists,
whether Judaic, Christian, or Muslim, is the proclivity to stigmatize their opponents by
labeling them as apostates from the one true way. In reality, this deeply polarizing
phenomenon often represents tribal strife over material resources and power rather than over
religion. (Is loving to hate others for the love of God consistent with religion?) On the other
hand, scholars point out that fundamentalism is the very opposite pole of secularism, and that
these two prominent “isms” trace back to the rise of modern science (which would accord
with the view of Tarnas).
Smith, in The Way Things Are elucidates: “Fundamentalists see their traditional
values threatened by scientistic, humanistic secularism. Of course their ways of reacting can
be very unbecoming and very scary . . . [Yet] the climate of modernity and post modernity is
excessively naturalistic and scientistic, and liberal intellectuals have played a part in making
it so” (158).
Trans-rationalism or the Higher Reaches of Self
Wilber remarks in his book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution, “The
capacity to go within and look at rationality results in going beyond rationality... If you are
aware of being rational, what is the nature of the awareness, since it is now bigger than
rationality?”(258). He points out that all of the contemplative traditions start with reason—
with the notion that truth is established by evidence, by experience—but “their teachings, and
their contemplative endeavors, were (and are) transrational through and through.” They all
claim “that there exist higher domains of awareness, embrace, love, identity, reality, self, and
truth.” These are not dogmas but conclusions “based on hundreds of years of experimental
introspection and communal verification” (265).
Reason is a marvelous and indispensable faculty. Together with experiment, it is
indispensable for modern science. It is the mode for philosophical discourse. But while
reason is the faculty we use for discussing truth, goodness, beauty, love, and compassion, it
alone cannot make them realities in our life. It is an indispensable but limited faculty. We do
not love our child, our lover, or a friend because it is reasonable to do so. Reason alone can
neither produce a great work of art nor understand unity with others beyond all differences.
Toward the Integration of Western Science and Non-Institutional Religion
In his Lowell lectures of 1925, Alfred North Whitehead said, “When we consider
what religion is for mankind, and what science is, it is no exaggeration to say that the future
course of history depends upon the decision of this generation as to the relations between
them" (181-182).
Half a century earlier, Blavatsky raised the same issue. As is evident in both The
Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled, she undertook the formidable task of demonstrating the
intercompatibility and complimentary relationship of the world religious traditions
themselves and the harmony in principle of (non-institutional or mystical) religion and
modern science. The subtitle of Blavatsky's masterwork, The Secret Doctrine, is “The
Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy.”
Happily, modern science has been wonderfully harmonizing itself over the past many
decades with spiritual principles—unintentionally, of course. This is most evident perhaps on
the frontiers of science, as distinct from its mainline or Darwinist theory of evolution. The
newer theory depicts evolution as a dynamic whole-making process that generates a
continuum of wholes-within-greater wholes—in the parlance of science, holons-withinholons. (A holon is an entity that is both a whole and a part of a greater whole; in fact we
know of no whole that is not also a part of a greater whole.) These theorists see the myriad
holons as self-organizing, self-differentiating, and self-evolving.
With these insights, the word “self” assumes a wonderful new status that reflects the
evolution of empirical science beyond materialism and mechanism—beyond the still-reigning
scientific worldview of the primacy of matter. This theory sees evolution as a living,
dynamic, process wherein the myriad selves (wholes/parts) self-differentiate only to selftranscend for the sake of the next higher—more embracing—holon-in-the-making. As Arthur
Koestler, who introduced the word holon, once remarked that unity seemed to be achieved by
a detour through diversity. Each emergent level transcends but includes the previous level.
These are successive stages of the evolution of consciousness along the hierarchical,
universal spectrum of consciousness. All holons, all existents, in effect, participate in a cocreative learning process—all, even molecules, atoms, and elementary particles, seem to
have, to some level of evolution, a mind of their own; nothing is divorced from
consciousness.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
In The Spectrum of Consciousness, Wilber defines evolution as “the movement of
Spirit, toward Spirit, as Spirit, the conscious resurrection, in all men and women, of the
Supreme Identity, an Identity present all along, but an Identity seemingly obscured by
manifestation, seemingly obscured by the limited view from a lower rung on the ladder”
(xvii).
Blavatsky described evolution as proceeding "from within without." Regrettably,
Wilber never alludes to Blavatsky but he characterizes evolution similarly as a process of
"within-and-beyond"—it "brings new withins and new beyonds." It is integral, we see, to the
afore-mentioned "decentering" process. In Theosophy, and similarly in the integral
worldview of Wilbur, the "within" reflects the postulate of involution as the necessary
precedent to evolution. By contrast, science does not claim to know what preceded the Big
Bang. It speaks in the language of theories, not in terms of transcendent reality. The process
of evolution from the standpoint of science is in effect a process of the more coming from the
less whereas in Theosophy or perennial philosophy the less comes from the more.
Mechanistic/materialistic thought dies hard, but modern science at its frontiers has
outgrown mechanism/materialism. Leading integral thinkers are at one in discerning
significant signs of a unitive movement in thought—an evolution toward the reconciliation of
modern science and authentic or mystical religion—a kind of spiritual renaissance. Think of
the dozens of comparative/integrative books, especially books on bridging science and
religion, including many best sellers, which have been published in the past half-century.
Concerned integral thinkers often employ the phrase integrating science and religion.
This may seem puzzling; after all, these are two very different pursuits employing two very
different methodologies. Ravi Ravindra, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion and
Adjunct Professor of Physics at Dalhousie University, Canada—and also a theosophist—
explains in Science and the Sacred that what is meant is a harmonization of the scientific and
religious aspirations in the soul—the Self, we might say—of one and the same person. For
Ravindra there is an essential complement between a great scientist and a great spiritual
aspirant: "The spiritual aspirant's concern to know the self—both the ordinary self and the
non-personal Self of all that exists—and the scientist's concern to know the world" are
mutually supportive and complementary.
Ravindra also remarks: "... all spiritual traditions assert that there are many levels of
being and consciousness within a person as well as in the cosmos, and that the highest can be
experienced only in the deepest part of the soul. Also, all the traditions say that there is
something, variously called Spirit or God or Allah or Brahman, which is above the mind. It
cannot be comprehended by the ordinary mind but can be experienced by human beings
whose consciousness has been radically transformed. . . In this traditional perspective, science
needs to serve the Spirit; otherwise it ends up serving, almost by default, the natural human
tendency towards self-centeredness, resulting in violence against and exploitation of other
humans, cultures, other creatures and the Earth" (114-115).
References
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______. The Secret Doctrine. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1966.
Edwords, Frederick. "What is Humanism?" Washington, DC: American Humanist
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Gomes, Michael. Isis Unveiled . Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1997.
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Humphreys, Christmas. Studies in the Middle Way:Being Thoughts on Buddhism Applied.
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Lemkow, Anna F. The Wholeness Principle: Dynamics of Unity Within Science, Religion and
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______. The Way Things Are: Conversations with Huston Smith on the Spiritual Life. Edited
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__________. Sex, Ecology, Spirituality. Boston, MA: Shambhala, 1995.