The Quest for Who We Are

This important new book is primarily aimed at mental health professionals: 'our modest aim here is to simply introduce audiences to an approach that seeks to restore a spiritual dimension to the discipline of psychology, in the quest for a true "science of the soul."' (p. 9) Samuel rightly points out that 'since its inception, modern Western psychology has gradually cut itself off from its metaphysical roots. This is evidenced, in part, by a shift from adopting words such as soul or psyche to an almost exclusive use of mind.' (Freud's Seele in German is translated by Ernest Jones as mind) So the secularising trajectory of Western culture epitomised by behaviourism and psychoanalysis has transformed psychology from being a "science of the soul" to one without it. This has been reinforced by the 'Eurocentric and hegemonic view that modernity (along with its science and psychology) provides the only valid forms of knowledge.' This scientistic presumption of epistemic superiority has crystallised into a dogma that 'violates the proper limits of science and betrays its method altogether.'

Samuel spells out the wider cultural implications of the West's implicitly value-laden culture of materialism, reductionism, and nihilism now engulfing the entire world through globalisation. This has 'essentially undermined the holistic identity of the traditional or pre-modern world, in which a life devoid of transcendence and a sense of the sacred would have been considered unthinkable.' We first have to acknowledge this plight before it can be rectified. Specifically, 'the implications of this truncated outlook on the human condition are manifold and can be attributed to the following: the confusion of the Absolute with the relative; Intellect with reason; Spirit with psyche; Self with ego; and Personality with individuality. An integrated psychology informed by the perennial philosophy recognises two dimensions of human identity: one relative or horizontal, and the other Absolute or vertical, which are never confused. (p. 29) As a result of modern Western psychology's rejection of its sacred and metaphysical roots, 'the "eye of the heart" has become eclipsed, causing a myriad of mental health challenges to ensue; maladies that cannot be treated by the crippling reductionism of its methods [including psychiatric drugs and CBT].' (p. 45)

As Seyyed Hossein Nasr pointed out in Man and Nature as far back as 1967 and reiterated here by Samuel: 'The human psyche belongs to the intermediary realm between body and spirit, but it partakes of both dimensions. The environment is therefore inseparable from the soul which, in turn, is rooted in higher degrees of manifestation, all of which comprise an irreducible wholeness. We often refer to an environmental crisis, [but] the real crisis lies not in the environment … but in the human heart. This predicament arises from our flawed engagement with reality: the way we think, the way we see ourselves, and the worldview we construct.' (p. 90) Hence, the need for a sacred cosmology of the kind still understood by indigenous traditions as a new underpinning for a science of the soul. Importantly, this will correspondingly restore the sacred I-Thou relationship that is in danger of being undermined by the objectified and mechanistic I-It. The degradation of the human psyche and the environment are two sides of the same coin demanding a fundamental transformation of consciousness or metanoia for the emergence of a resacralised worldview of both nature and the human. This is a bold and lucid call for a metaphysical revolution to undergird a new science of the soul.