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Reviews for A Sense of the Cosmos: Scientific Knowledge and Spiritual Truth:
From Publishers Weekly, November 15, 2003, by Publishers Weekly Staff "The venerable theme of rapprochement between science and spirituality gets painstakingly explored in this mazy treatise. Needleman (a professor of philosophy and religion, novelist, consultant on education and medical ethics and the author of numerous books, including The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Fathers) invokes a number of mystical/philosophical thinkers, including Heidegger, Gurdjieff, Kierkegaard and Maimonides, to help plumb the conundrums of cosmology, particle physics, medicine, psychology and "the One ultimate question: the Being of beings." With considerable effort, readers will uncover a rather familiar critique: science divorces the intellect from the body and the emotions and presents a picture of a meaningless, mechanistic universe that makes people feel both alienated and self-important. Because man is a "microcosm," true knowledge of "the universal laws of energy, time and causality" comes only from "direct observation in oneself" in relation to them, he says, as recommended by the great mystical traditions--especially the Eastern religions, whose physical/meditative rituals are a model of the union of body, intellect and emotions. It is only through "the Path" of intense spiritual discipline, Needleman contends, that we can contemplate the" play of inner and outer forces that influence... life." Section headings like "What is Consciousness?" and"The Face of Reality" convey the grandiosity and nebulousness of Needleman's reflections, which put a rationalistic gloss on traditional mystic themes of the oneness of being, the superiority of emotion and experience to analysis, and the communion between the individual and the "consciousness" of the universe. Scientists will find little of value in these ruminations, but readers in search of a reenchanted cosmos may be comforted." --- From Venture Inward Magazine http://www.edgarcayce.org/venture_inward/archive.asp Science of Spirituality Needs Love I have always equated Edgar Cayce with the scientific approach. That link may seem odd to folks who think of science as all numbers and stainless steel, but I think of science as a method of questioning. Religion, for example, confidently offers its answers while science is skeptical. In its doubting, science wants to stick its finger into the miracle to actually feel it. Galileo wants to peek into the telescope to see if the sun really does revolve around the earth while the Pope remains seated, content with the Bible’s description of Heaven. Science as it is practiced today, of course, is more like religion, in that science has stopped questioning its assumptions. But I’m speaking about the spirit of science, the force in nature that is continually seeking to expand its consciousness. So why do I link Edgar Cayce with science? Because so often he requested that we ignore his words unless we have tested his suggestions, tried them out, and made them our own, so that we can speak from our experience rather than from his readings. When he says, “In the application comes the awareness,” it means to me that thinking about living is different from actually living, and it is in the living that the thoughts about living really take on any value they may have to guide our living. Cayce’s insistence on personal application as a form of scientific research receives support from the rather complex message in the book, A Sense of the Cosmos: Scientific Knowledge and Spiritual Truth (Monkfish Book Publishing Company). The author, Jacob Needleman, is a well-known philosopher and someone who has addressed Edgar Cayce audiences. The book is his answer to the puzzle over the seeming failure of science to help us live life better. He ponders why it might be that even as science attempts, in the guise of transpersonal psychology, to discover the laws of life that will provide genuine human fulfillment, it seems to fall short of the mark. He applauds science’s curiosity, its unquenchable thirst for better knowledge, but he notes that it lacks an important ingredient. Of the many ways he describes this missing component, my favorite is when he calls it “the knowledge of the heart.” Intellectual knowledge is important, but in itself is insufficient to discover and live the sacred ideas reality has lying in wait for us. Religion has given us some handles on these ideas, and science is searching for its own handles. But he believes that both have neglected an important aspect of the human being as a phenomenon who processes ideas and uses them to interact with reality. It is the human body. Our instincts, feelings, the heart – and not the head – is our capability for experiencing values. Using the intellect alone, the scientistic human cannot see values as an objective aspect of reality, but only as a subjective personal choice. On the other hand, the human being with head and heart integrated is indeed capable of both experiencing the objective values that lie inherent in the created world and understanding how to establish a relationship with those values – in other words, to live them. I received a sacred idea once in a dream. There was a locomotive in the dream. There was a sail plane, too, the type that soars on the wings of the wind rather than by using a propeller or jet engine. In the dream, I am told that under certain conditions, I can fly in the sail plane, receiving the “lift” I need from the locomotive. I meditated on that dream and could understand the symbology of the fixed, karmic path of the cause-and-effect ironhorse track and, in contrast, the relative freedom and grace of the gossamer sail plane. But it wasn’t until I got up out of my chair and began to dance each component, allowing the dream’s symbology to have use of my body and its sensations, that I was led into a state of transformative consciousness. For a moment of grace I was actually able to experience the sacred, as if “The Secret” had revealed Itself to me. My body, moving to the images of the dream, led to the intuitive discovery of how the two dimensions of my being can actually cooperate and work together. To reconcile these two dimensions of human existence, Tthe spiritual and the material, seems to be Needleman’s goal. It is not a task for the intellect alone, nor is it a task that just anyone can accomplish. He wants us to understand that it requires virtue. This virtue is a willingness to experience the higher truths for their own sake – not for the sake of getting a leg up on life’s satisfactions or to gain special credentials to enjoy the satisfactions of the afterlife – but purely for the sake of experiencing the joy and love that these truths contain. To love for the sake of love itself is what is required to be able to experience – not just to think about – the meaning of love, much less to realize the mystical equation, “God is Love,” which would initiate a spiritual science. --- From http://www.curledup.com/asenseof.htm by Marie D. Jones Author Jacob Needleman’s A Sense of the Cosmos: Scientific Knowledge and Spiritual Truth combines his years of impressive research and teaching in the arenas of religion, philosophy and medical research into a powerful and at times profound discussion of science and religion and the quest for human knowledge, and understanding at the core of both. This revised edition offers Needleman’s philosophical approach to the necessity of understanding the self in order to truly understand the cosmos, and his scientific background and knowledge of world religions enables him to make stunning comparisons between major religious traditions and scientific pursuits, while also pointing out their distinctions. Needleman argues that basic scientific knowledge does one little good without being able to apply it personally, or understand it with a deeper wisdom that comes from spirit. And he makes that same argument for pure religion, that without scientific understanding of our place in the cosmos, religion means little or nothing. Using examples from history, the author points out how scientific advances have often left humanity feeling empty, despite profound progress in medicine and technology. He likens this emptiness to a lack of understanding of the concept of man as microcosm to the macrocosm of the Universe as a whole, living organism, and sets the stage for a meeting of intellect with intuition, science with magic, progress with spirituality. But what makes this book unique is that Needleman focuses more on the differences and separations between science and religion and, rather than trying to point out all they have in common and find a sustained harmony between both, he focuses on those differences as a way of becoming aware that nature is really about reciprocal relationships between “separate but interdependent entities.” We are all one, but perhaps not quite in the way we’ve been told by the religions we so blindly follow. Much of this book may go over the heads of someone not familiar with metaphysics and modern physics, and some of the philosophies Needleman expounds may take two readings to digest, but this book will no doubt make people think, and wonder, and imagine what could be possible for humanity if we could for once find our true place in the cosmos. As Needleman states in his introduction, we are in a state of being “between dreams,” and the goal is to become awake and aware enough to begin to see modern science as an aspect of our own inner selves. Then we will have achieved the ultimate union with the Divine.
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