Allama M. T. Jafari on Conscience: Vijdan the core element of human self

(1925 - 1998)

By: Seyed Javad Meynagh

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious... He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.

Albert Einstein

Introduction

In order to be able to understand the importance of Allama Jafari’s considerations on the question of Conscience one needs to re-read some recent reappraisal of some epistemological aspects of modern/secular metaphysics of being and ontology of reality. In other words, it would be more beneficial to look at few trends within the social theory of self and being which have come with novel ideas about the significance of conscience in relation to science. If we could see from this perspective then the importance of Allama Jafari’s engagement on the question of Conscience could have significant consequences even for our theories in regard to philosophy of science and cosmology of being.

The last few decades have seen the emergence of a growing body of literature [1] devoted to a critique of the so-called "old" or "Cartesian-Newtonian" paradigm which, in the wake of the prodigious successes of modern natural science, came to dominate the full range of authoritative intellectual discourse and its associated worldviews. Often coupled with a materialistic, and indeed atomistic, metaphysics, this paradigm has been guided by the methodological principle of reductionism. The critics of reductionism have tended to promote various forms of holism, a term which, perhaps more than any other, has served as the rallying cry for those who see themselves as creators of a "new paradigm." More recently, the notion of complexity has been taken up by the more scientifically informed representatives of the new paradigm, without, however, sufficient awareness of the fact that what excites the scientists is the possibility of explaining, modeling-in short, of reducing-the phenomenon of complexity to fundamentally simple, essentially atomistic, operational counters.[2] The situation is quite otherwise, however, in the work of renowned French thinker Edgar Morin, whose professional life has been devoted to elucidating the irreducible character of genuine complexity. Because his work has yet to reach a wide global audience,[3] most new paradigm thinkers have not had the benefit of his masterful critique of reductionism, or simplification, as he prefers to call it.[4] Nevertheless, the principles of complex thinking which inform this critique are essential for any coherent theoretical challenge to the still dominant paradigm of simplification.
At the forefront of such a challenge, and in many ways the herald of the new paradigm, is the relatively new movement of transpersonal social theory within the frame of psychological discipline. Responding to the revolution in consciousness associated with the 60s counterculture-which involved widespread interest in "altered" states of consciousness, oriental philosophies and spiritual disciplines, perennial orientations within philosophy and mysticism, ecological awareness, social activism, and speculative or "fringe" science-Abraham Maslaw, Stanislav Grof, Anthony Sutich, and James Fadiman proposed the term "transpersonal" to describe a new, "fourth force" psychology (the first three forces being behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and humanistic psychology) within wider context of social theory and philosophy. The prefix trans points to the concept of transcendence implied in a whole class of experiences involving "an extension of identity beyond both individuality and personality" (Walsh and Vaughan, p.16).
In taking seriously such experiences, transpersonal theory has been compelled to transcend the disciplinary boundaries of mainstream social theory. On the one hand, it has opened itself to the reality of "Spirit" in its many forms (as revealed in myths and visions, meditation and other contemplative disciplines, in philosophy, art, doctrines, and rituals), and so has drawn freely from such disciplines as religious studies, cultural anthropology, and comparative philosophy. On the other hand, in its attempt to articulate more comprehensive and coherent models of the psyche capable of accommodating experiences of transcendence, transpersonal social theory has also led the way in exploring the fruitfulness of conceptual analogues drawn from the leading edge of the natural sciences (the new physics, evolutionary biology, Systems Theory). In this brief introduction we will explore the transdisciplinary excursions of transpersonal social theory with an eye on the extent to which its theoretical innovations embody the principles of complex thinking- i.e., the dialogic, the holographic principle, and recursivity. I thought while transpersonal psychological inclinations within social theory has already attained a level of considerable theoretical maturity, it would be greatly assisted in fulfilling its transdisciplinary promise were it to enter into ongoing dialogue with the paradigm of complexity as articulated by Morin. Although the official beginnings of the transpersonal movement date only from 1969, significant theoretical advances were already underway at the turn of the 20th century in West and earlier in other civilizational contexts. In 1903, just three years after the publication of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, Frederic Myers, in his massive Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, proposed a radically transpersonal view of the human psyche based on an enormous quantity of data collected by the British Society for Psychical Research. Whether or not one agrees with Myers's conclusions regarding the probability of some kind of personal immortality, his subtle musings on the complex character of the "subliminal Self" deserve far greater attention than they have hitherto received within social theory and philosophy. Steering a middle course between, on the one hand, the "old-fashioned or common sense" view of the psyche as organized around the "unity of the Ego" and, on the other hand, the then current experimental view of the psyche as a biologically driven "co-ordination" of disparate elements, Myers concluded:
I regard each man as at once profoundly unitary and almost infinitely composite, as inheriting from earthly ancestors a multiplex and "colonial" organism-polyzoic and perhaps polyspychic in an extreme degree; but also as ruling and unifying that organism by a soul or spirit absolutely beyond our present analysis-a soul which has originated in a spiritual or metetherial environment; which even while embodied subsists in that environment; and which will subsist therein after the body's decay.
Writing in his 1901 Gifford Lectures, The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James regarded Myers's concept of the subliminal, or "transmarginal," Self as "the most important step forward that has occurred in social theory since I have been a student of that science…"(James, 234). Commenting on the implications of the transmarginal Self, James writes:

It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different…. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded…. [they] may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map…

Looking back on his own experiences and investigations of this region, James feels that

"they all converge towards a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance."

It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity. Not only do they, as contrasted species, belong to one and the same genus, but one of the species, the nobler and better one, is itself the genus and so soaks up and absorbs its opposite into itself. This is a dark saying, I know, when thus expressed in terms of common logic…. those who have ears to hear, let them hear (ibid., 374).

It is telling that, in recognizing ordinary consciousness as embedded within what he elsewhere describes as multiple "fields" of indeterminate extent, James is driven to transcend "the terms of common logic" and invoke an epistemology that can encompass the unity, or co-presence, of opposites. When knowledge of organization (in this case, the organization of consciousness or the psyche) reaches the threshold of complexity, as Morin so often demonstrates, one cannot avoid a corresponding reformation in the organization of knowledge. Such a reformation is a characteristic trait of the transpersonal project. C. G. Jung clearly had ears to hear, and struggled for over half a century to lay the groundwork for a truly complex social theory of self (and various layers of being). His first move in this direction involved trying to account for the fact that the perspectives of Freud and Adler, though mutually antagonistic, were equally complementary. They were, as Morin would say, dialogically related (see Morin 1977, 80). While one or the other perspective might prove more therapeutically advantageous, depending upon the specific needs of the individual client, a truly coherent and comprehensive model of the psyche must be able to accommodate both. Jung concluded that Freud's perspective, which emphasizes the sexual instinct, is primarily object-oriented-or extraverted, as he proposed to call it-while Adler's, which emphasizes the power drive-is introverted. This fundamental typological distinction allowed Jung to make sense not only of the conflict between Freud and Adler, but also of the analogous tension running throughout the history of ideas (with the perennial dispute between materialists and idealists or secularists and religionists, for instance). A second tension with which Jung struggled, and which clearly signaled his break with Freud, concerns the dialogical relation between the reductive-analytic and the prospective-synthetic perspectives on the meaning of psychological symptoms that are of significance for the constitution of self. Again, Jung always granted that certain cases are best approached from a classical analytic perspective, with its reduction to the oedipal conflict. In other cases, however, such a reduction does violence to the future-oriented drive for meaning and wholeness-a drive which Jung considered as equally fundamental as the sex drive or the drive for power.

The goal toward which, however implicitly, the psyche's symbolic productions seemed to point was the actualization of a potential wholeness the phenomenology of which, though always in some way specific to the individual in question, nevertheless suggested an invariant deep structure. Jung proposed the term "individuation" to describe the psyche's process of self-actualization, and the term "Self" for that which is actualized. The wholeness of the Self is clearly complex in character, which is why, says Jung, that "it can only be described in antinomial terms" (Jung, Vol. 9ii, par.115)). It is "both ego and non-ego, subjective and objective, individual and collective. It is the "uniting symbol' which epitomizes the total union of opposites" (Jung, 16: 474). Though Jung used several phrases to describe the nature of the Self- from the "psyche in its totality" and the "more compendious personality" to "the god within" (in this sense making the association with the theological notion of the imago dei, the Atman, and the Tao)- the most succinct formula is that of the Self as complexio oppositorum (See Jung, 6:790; 9ii:355, 423; 11:283, 716; 12:259).

Jung recognized that the concept of the Self is a "transcendental postulate" which, "although justified empirically, does not allow of scientific proof" (Jung, 7:404). This "step beyond science"-by which we can understand the conception of science advocated by the paradigm of reductionism or simplification-"is an unconditional requirement of the psychological development I sought to depict, because without this postulate I could give no adequate formulation of the psychic processes that occur empirically" (ibid.). This is a point that has been raised by Allama Jafari too and will be touched upon later on too.
Corresponding to the concept of the Self as "transcendental postulate" is Jung's notion of the "transcendent function" which, in general terms, is the cognitive process that "arises from the union of conscious and unconscious contents" (Jung., 8:131). This function represents a creative response on the part of the individuating ego when it finds itself trapped between two seemingly irreconcilable positions-for instance, between the promptings of intuition or feeling and the voice of reason, or between the security of habitual values and the lure of innovative change. In such a conflict situation, the confrontation of the two positions "generates a tension charged with energy and creates a living, third thing-not a logical stillbirth in accordance with the principle tertium non datur but a movement out of the suspension between opposites, a living birth that leads to a new level of being, a new situation" (ibid., 189). There now emerges "a new content, constellated by thesis and antithesis in equal measure and standing in a compensatory relation to both" (Jung, 6:825). This comes very close to what Morin discerns as perhaps the greatest virtue of complex thinking-namely, "the aptitude of enveloping the anti in the meta" (Morin 1982, 317). What this means is "not letting oneself be dissociated by contradiction and antagonism… but on the contrary, integrating it in a whole (ensemble) where it may continue to ferment, where, without losing is destructive potential, it acquires at the same time a constructive possibility" (ibid., 318). This integral approach to the question of self bears great resemblance to Allama Jafari’s view on the ‘Conscience’ as the Fontes Vitae of humanity in its authentically emancipative fashion (Allama Jafari, 1381. p 305) or his idea about ‘higher conscience’ that is reflected by the great prophets, mystics and thinkers such as Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Dostoeveky, Rumi, and Socrates. (1381. p 304) In other words, it would be very exciting to find out how, for instance, Grof’s view on ‘holotropic’ approach to self-exploration is or could be connected to Allama Jafari’s view on Vijdan as the true source of self-discovery. Because Allama Jafari thinks that Vijdan drives one toward a directed/purposeful divine target and Grof’s understanding of holotropic approach is based on a pristine reading of holotropy, i.e. from the Greek "holos" whole and "trepein" moving in the direction of something. These resemblances have not been researched yet and need to be explored intercivilizationally in order to explicate the deep-seated issues which could affect the very textures of self, society, and global coexistence in our troubled time.

Within the general context of social theory the complexification of psychology evident in the early transpersonal models of the psyche proposed by Myers, James, and Jung, received unexpected clinical-experiential confirmation in the 1950s and 60s through the pioneering psychedelic research of Stanislav Grof, one of the creative founders of the transpersonal movement. The experiential data on the effects of LSD gathered by Grof and his colleagues in Prague, and subsequently confirmed through thousands of drug-free sessions of holotropic breathwork,[5] totally undermined the classic assumptions of Grof's materialistic, atheistic, and classical Freudian training. Deep, experiential engagement with the psyche, though it confirmed the relative truth of Freud's "biographical-recollective" view of the unconscious, also revealed deeper and subtler realms, including the Rankian unconscious, the Jungian-archetypal, and beyond. Human beings, Grof writes, show a peculiar ambiguity which somewhat resembles the particle-wave dichotomy of light and subatomic matter. In some situations, they can be successfully described as separate material objects and biological machines, whereas in others they manifest the properties of vast fields of consciousness that transcend the limitations of space, time, and causality. There seems to be a fundamental dynamic tension between these two aspects of human nature, which reflects the ambiguity between the part and the whole that exists all through the cosmos on different levels of reality (Grof 1985, 344). Grof was the first social theorist within transpersonal psychological context to suggest that the holographic model which David Bohm had proposed for the new physics and Karl Pribram for brain research was equally fruitful for the realm of the psyche. According to Morin, the holographic principle-which involves the recognition that "the parts are in the whole which is in the parts" (see Morin 1986, 104)-is an essential ingredient of complex thinking. While ordinary, or "hylotropic" consciousness "involves the experience of oneself as a solid physical entity with definite boundaries and a limited sensory range, living in three-dimensional space and linear time" (Grof, 1985, 345), "holotropic" consciousness "involves identification with a field of consciousness with no definite boundaries which has unlimited experiential access to different aspects of reality without the mediation of the senses" (ibid. 346).
Experiences in the holotropic mode systematically support a set of assumptions diametrically different from that characterizing the hylotropic mode: the solidity and discontinuity of matter is an illusion generated by a particular orchestration of events in consciousness; time and space are ultimately arbitrary; the same space can be simultaneously occupied by many objects; the past and the future can be brought experientially into the present moment; one can experience oneself in several places at the same time; one can experience several temporal frameworks simultaneously; being a part is not incompatible with being the whole; something can be true and untrue at the same time; form and emptiness are interchangeable; and others (ibid.).
Clearly, holotropic experiences constitute a serious challenge to the paradigm of simplification. They demand an honoring not only of the holographic principle, but of the dialogic as well insofar as holotropic experiences tend to exist in a state of "fundamental dynamic tension" with respect to ordinary, hylotropic consciousness. While Grof considers neurotic and psychotic phenomena to be the result of "an unresolved conflict between the two modes" (ibid., 400), he envisions the possibility of a "higher sanity" for individuals "who have achieved a balanced interplay of both complementary modes of consciousness" (ibid., 401]. While Grof, like Jung before him, has sought to expand and complexify his model of the psyche to accommodate the empirical data with which, as a clinician and researcher, he was faced, Ken Wilber, the most ambitious and formidable theoretician of the transpersonal movement, is the first explicitly and intentionally to overstep the disciplinary boundaries of scientific human sciences. In his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977), Wilber argued for the partiality and one-sidedness of the major schools of social theory in general and psychology in particular, each of which was seen to correspond to a distinct "band" of the consciousness spectrum. The higher wavelengths of the spectrum, moreover, transcend psychology altogether, and it is to the world's philosophical and spiritual traditions that we must turn for indications of their nature as Myers, James, Jung, and Grof, in their own way, also suggested and have been proposed vehemently by Allama Jafari in his discussions on ‘Conscience’ and its role for the emergence of universal humanity and peaceful societies. In his 1983 book, Eye to Eye, Wilber called for a "transcendental paradigm" or "overall knowledge quest that would include not only the 'hard ware' of physical sciences but also the 'soft ware' of philosophy and social theory/psychology and the 'transcendental ware' of mystical-spiritual religion" (Wilber 1983, 1). Alongside the spectrum model, and eventually more or less replacing it in importance, Wilber appealed to the "perennial" philosophical notion of the "Great Chain of Being," whose major "links" are Matter, Life, Mind, and Spirit, or physiosphere, biosphere, noosphere, and theosphere. Coupled with the metaphor of the Great Chain is the master-concept of holarchy, which Wilber has adopted, and creatively adapted, from Systems Theory and certain strands of evolutionary biology. This concept, which itself implies the idea of a nested hierarchy of spheres within spheres, is somewhat at odds with the Great Chain metaphor, which rather suggests the idea of sequentially and externally related "links." Wilber admits that "we can use metaphors of 'levels' or 'ladders' or 'strata' only if we exercise a little imagination in understanding the complexity that is actually involved" (Wilber 1995, 19). At his best, Wilber succeeds admirably in doing just that. In his discussion of the Nondual character of the Absolute, for instance, Wilber recognizes that "Reality is not just Summit (omega) and not just Source (alpha), but is Suchness-the timeless and ever-present Ground which is equally and fully present in and as every single being, high or low, ascending or descending, effluxing or refluxing" (ibid., 347). Despite, however, Wilber's occasional stressing of the equipotency in the cosmic economy of hierarchy and heterarchy (or depth and span) and Ascent and Descent (or purpose and play), he still insists that the noosphere contains the biosphere, but not the reverse (and that the theosphere contains them both, but not the reverse). In this, and certain other respects, although still highly pertinent to the transdisciplinary as well as intercivilizational projects, Wilber's paradigm is insufficiently spiced, as it were, with the essential ingredients of complex thinking. His understanding of holarchical integration (the higher includes the lower) gives expression to only half of the holographic principle (which implies that the lower also includes the higher). By the same token, Wilber does not seem to recognize that the various links in the Great Chain are not only holarchically, but also dialogically related. As Kelly has similarly argued (see Kelly 1993) with respect to Hegel, holarchical integration, as Wilber advocates it, is colored by an introverted, idealist bias toward the auto (or ego)-logic of Spirit over the eco-logic of nature. This bias obscures the degree to which the "higher" (mind or Spirit) sometimes not only does not include, but actively represses the "lower" (the body, Nature; see Kelly 1998). In such cases, the whole, as Morin would say, is not all (see Morin 1977, 123ff.). Also obscured is the paradoxical manner in which mind and spirit are subtly embedded within, and often manifest powerfully through, the body and nature. And this, again, despite the fact that Wilber can claim that, "If spirit is completely transcendent, it is also completely immanent. I am firmly convinced that if a new and comprehensive paradigm is ever to emerge, that paradox will be its heart" (Wilber 1983, 293). The ability of the mind to countenance this paradox (and its corollaries) demands the mobilization of what Wilber calls "vision-logic" which, he writes, "is a higher holon that operates upon (and thus transcends) its junior holons, such as simple rationality itself."
As such, vision-logic can hold in mind contradictions, it can unify opposites, it is dialectical and non-linear, and it weaves together what otherwise appear to be incompatible notions, as long as they relate together in the new and higher holon, negated in their partiality but preserved in their positive contributions (Wilber 1995, 185).
This description leaves no doubt that vision-logic, as Wilber conceives of it, is more or less identical with the Hegelian dialectic and its process of "sublation" (aufheben). While Morin honors Hegel for having recognized, with the dialectic, "the existence of a principle of negativity which transforms all things, all beings, all acts into their opposites" (Morin 1980, 82), he faults Hegel for considering contradiction a transitory "moment" of the Aufhebung, a moment which is ultimately annulled in the "synthesis" of the third term (see Morin 1982, 289). Wilber's vision-logic is subject to the same strictures, particularly insofar as it subserves the idealist metaphysics associated with the root metaphor of the Great Chain of Being. Although the notion of vision-logic represents a significant step beyond the formal-operational thinking typical of the mature mental ego, it must, like the Hegelian dialectic, "itself be sublated in a dialogic… that instigates the interaction, through the joining in a manner at once complementary… and antagonistic, of two logics-auto-logic and eco-logic" (Morin 1980, 82).
In his most recent writings, Wilber has combined the Great Chain metaphor with, and embedded it within, a "Kosmic mandala" consisting of two intersecting axes-Interior/Exterior and Individual/Collective-which, when combined, yield four quadrants or world spaces: the intentional (interior/individual), the cultural (interior/collective), the behavioral (exterior/individual), and the social (exterior/collective). Though it is possible, and indeed basically crucial occasionally, to consider discrete "holons" as they manifest in one or the other quadrant, Wilber insists that any truly "integral," or we might say "complex," methodology must proceed on the basis of an "all-quadrant, all-level" approach. "This is a methodology," he writes, of "phenomenologically and contemporaneously tracking the various levels and lines in each of the quadrants and then correlating their overall relations, each to all of the others, and in no way trying to reduce any to the others" (Wilber 1997, 91). While, as Kelly argues, one couldn't agree more strongly, it is once again unclear just how such a methodology squares with his strict adherence to the perennialist version of holarchical integration where Mind (the Interior, or "left" hand quadrants) includes Matter (the Exterior, or "right" hand quadrants), but not the reverse. Toward the end of the first volume of his monumental Kosmos trilogy, Wilber poses the following questions:

Can we not see Spirit as the Life of Evolution and the Love of Kosmos itself…? Does not the refluxing movement of God and the effluxing movement of the Goddess embrace the entire Circle of Ascent and Descent? Can we not…see that Spirit always manifests in all four quadrants equally? Is not Spirit here and now in all its radiant glory, eternally present as every I and every We and every It? (Wilber 1995, 522).
It is, as Kelly remarks, in passages such as these that Wilber comes closest to realizing a truly integral or complex point of view. Though, as Kelly realizes, lacking a sufficiently dialogical grasp of the relations involved, his claim that "the circle of Ascending and Descending energies must always be unbroken" (Wilber 1995, 326) does suggest a recognition of the principle of recursivity which, along with the dialogic and the holographic principle, is one of Morin's essential ingredients of complex thinking. According to Morin, a process is recursive when it "causes/produces the effects/products necessary for its own regeneration" (Morin 1981, 162). It is "the circuitous process whereby the ultimate effect or product becomes the initial element or first cause" (Morin 1977, 186). The recursivity evident on the metaphysical plane with the relation AscentàDescent (and DescentàAscent) is mirrored on the psychological plane in the relation personalàtranspersonal (and transpersonal à personal), as well on the methodological or disciplinary plane with the relation scienceàspirituality (and spiritualityàscience). In contrast to the situation where Ascent, the transpersonal, and spirituality would sublate their respective correlates in a "higher" (idealist) synthesis, a truly complex (meta) point of view would insure that the "Great Circle,"as Wilber calls it, remain unbroken. For this to happen, as Kelly suggests, however, the concepts of holism (or holarchy) and the Nondual, though cardinal insights in their own right will have to be tempered with the dialogic, the holographic principle, and the principle of recursivity.

We have seen that what drives transpersonal social theory in the direction of complexity is its focus on transcendence (of the mental ego and of psychology's disciplinary closure). Let me conclude with Kelly’s words on how the concept of spiritual transcendence appears to function in Morin's articulation of the emerging paradigm of complexity. On a first reading, it might seem that Morin makes no room for transcendence, at least not in the sense of Wilber's holarchical ontology. Morin recognizes no theosphere, or Absolute Spirit, which includes as it transcends the phenomenal world studied by the various sciences (whether natural or human). He is unambiguous in his rejection of the religions of salvation, whether otherworldly or this worldly. "There is no salvation", Morin writes,
in the sense of religions that promise personal immortality. There is no earthly salvation, as promised by the communist religion-that is, a social solution-in which the lives of all and everyone would be freed from misfortune, uncertainty, and tragedy. We must forsake this salvation radically and definitively (Morin 1998, 134).
And yet Morin does recognize that, though the human condition is irrevocably "this worldly and bound to the fate of the Earth," it nonetheless "also involves a quest for the beyond. Not a beyond outside of the world, but a beyond relative to the hic et nunc, to misery and misfortune, an unknown beyond that is proper to the unknown adventure" (ibid., 135). It is in this sense of transcendence as an immanent "beyond" that Morin is able to envision the possibility, and even the necessity, of a third type of religion-not a religion of salvation, but a religion of fellowship, freedom, and love. In such a religion, "the absence of God would reveal an omnipresent mystery." Such a religion "would be without revelation, a religion of love, of compassion, although without the salvation of the immortal/risen self or deliverance through the dissipation of self." (ibid., 142) Just how we experience, and make sense of, the "omnipresent mystery" of the immanent beyond is, of course, a central concern of transpersonal social theory with traditional psychological concerns. Although, as we have seen, its various formulations of human selfhood-whether Myers's and James's subliminal or transmarginal Self, Jung's Self as complexio oppositorium, Grof's holotropic, or Wilber's holarchical Self-all represent significant attempts in coming to terms with the complex character of the immanent beyond, much remains to be explored. Transpersonal social theory is barley three decades old, and it will doubtless continue to mature in the direction of greater theoretical subtlety and sophistication. If it is to carry on, and fulfill intercivilizationally beneficial role within the contemporary globalizing catastrophic inclined milieu one needs to enrich one’s perspective through comparatively inter/transdisciplinary as well as non-disciplinary avenues, as we are living in a time where parallel times and spaces are at work in shaping our realities, imaginations and so on and so forth. The changes brought about by transpersonal social theorists in regard to our understanding of self and transcendence when coupled with the philosophy of conscience explored by Allama Jafari in the context of metaphysics of science may be able to bring about a Copernican revolution in relation to our understanding about the sources of ‘Inner Freedom’, ‘Personality’, ‘Human Conscience’ and ‘Man as an expression of the Infinite’. (Allama Jafari, 1381. p 307)

Last but not least, it should be emphasized that prior to modernity we could think of world in terms of distinct civilizations, traditions, religions, denominations, nations, societies, states, continents and cultures but today although we can still think of respective distinctiveness of each and every one of these entities but nevertheless it would be futile to fathom them in isolation as we are in the middle of intercivilizational project where all the agents and players are in constant conscious or unconscious interactions. So, it would be intellectually more beneficial and coexistentially more benevolent to transform the scope of our unawareness into active consciousness as self-consciousness next to God-consciousness is of great rational significance for the emergence of good life. In other words, it is high time to change the status quo in our local education within European and Western universities by turning to global educational consciousness through exposing the mind to all relevant traditions that have contributed and still engagingly contribute to the constant emergence of intercivilizational global reality. This could not be brought about unless we get engaged with those intellectuals who have been interacting with the global emerging reality –not through western rationality but- via their own distinct intellectual tradition. The Muslim intellectual tradition is one prime example in this regard which has been part of Western civilization as well as a great contributor to the emergence of intercivilizational dialogue both from within the West and without. In this article we would like to present one of the contemporary Muslim thinkers who have been of grand significance in the constitution of modern tradition of intercivilizational reality in Iran.

Biography

Mohammad Taqi Jafari was born in Azerbijan in Tabriz in northwest of Iran and studied Islamic sciences along with western human sciences and eastern philosophies in that city. He was the student of some famous masters like Late Sheikh Sadra Ghafghazli, Ayatollah Sheykh Mohammad Reza Tonekaboni and Mirza Mehdi Ashtiani at Marvi School. Then he went to holy Najaf in 1938. He entered the class of some great masters like Ayatollah Sheykh Mohammad Kazem Shirazi, Ayatollah Haj Seyyed Abolghasem Khoee, Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Shahroodi, Ayatollah Hakim, Ayatollah Seyyed Jamal Golpayegani, Ayatollah Abdolhadi Shirazi, Ayatollah Milani, and his moral and Gnosticism teacher Ayatollah Morteza Taleghani that was a sweet memory for him up to the end of his life. He has been learning there for 11 years and then went back to Iran and started teaching at various centers of higher education in Tehran. He was a very prolific write and left more than 120 volumes of precious books during his intellectual life. Allama Mohammad Taqi Jafari Tabrizi was one of the conspicuous persons of his time in that he was considered himself as a student of knowledge wherever it may lead you. In other words, he belongs to an intellectual tradition that does not consider knowledge a property of social or political conventions but discerns in the nub of knowledge pursuit an avenue towards spiritual perfection and intellectual freedom from ignorance. That is to say he considered knowledge as a universal valid way to unlock the mysteries of cosmos both within and without.

Allama Jafari and Human Sciences

There is no doubt that the disciplinary form of human sciences have emerged in the West and most particularly in France, Germany and England and later on in America. I emphasize on the term ‘particularly’ as, for instance, the discipline of sociology in Turkey or political science in Iran did emerge 100 years earlier than Canada, New Zeeland or Australia which sometimes are collectively put in the same category as Western, which gives a totally unrealistic picture of the growth of social sciences globally. However what is doubtful and still widespread among social scientists and the historiographers who portray images of the histories of each discipline within the pantheon of human sciences is the notion of ‘relevant debates’ that mainly starts from secular western thinkers and end with them too. In other words, when you pick up any theoretical or historiographical work on social sciences it is very hard to distinguish between western and global as though these two terms should mean one and the same thing even though the theorists claim that they are arguing about something extra-western and all-inclusive. But this is hard to substantiate as long as we don’t hear about other voices and disallow the emergence of other relevant issues within the pantheon of human sciences. I have argued this question elsewhere more in detail and here would like to settle for this concise detour and conclude a point which would assist me in presenting Allama Jafari as a highly relevant social theorist and contemporary philosopher who engaged in various aspects of humanities in general and human sciences in particular. To substantiate this claim we can turn to his works and see what he has to say about ‘human sciences’ or as he puts it in Persian ‘Ulum Ensani’ in relation to the main question of this essay, namely ‘Conscience’ or ‘Vijdan’.

For years, he states, I have been

… researching on various aspects of human sciences and many times came across the word ‘conscience’ and pondered upon it for hours but sadly I have to tell you that I could not find anything essentially convincing about the disciplinary approaches provided by the researchers on this question as I found most of them have been extremely concerned with highly expert-oriented subtleties … … without an enlightening end in sight. But more I thought of this question and introspectively analyzed my own inner data I found out that this a highly relevant question and as a matter of fact it could prove to be one of the most significant issues of human existence, if understood rightly. With this new insight I restarted my research on this question by looking at the works of contemporary philosophers, psychologists and psychoanalysts as far as I could … … but my search did not lead me to an enlightening state as I found out that most of these discourses are devoid of vital aspects as they are mainly conceptual devices to explain conceptual problems constructed by earlier thinkers without any existential understanding … … . Now I don’t want to argue that they all have been mistaken but I would like to emphasize that their discourses did not convince me about what I have already found as highly significant and vitally important for the existence of Human Being in contrast to Animals –which eat, sleep, cry, laugh, mate, reproduce and die. In other words, if we agree that Man is a his own owner/possessor and able to think and be free then what the contemporary secular thinkers have argued are not sufficient … . (Allama Jafari, 2002. pp 13-14)

This rather lengthy quote perfectly demonstrates that Allama Jafari was conscious about modern/secular discourses as well as other contemporary discourses such as those by Russian thinkers, Indian wisdom philosophers, western poets and literary writers such as Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Dante and ancient Greek and Chinese thinkers such as Socrates and Confucius. Apart from this one can discern his serious concern about human sciences as they are understood within disciplinary framework of contemporary academia. Now what he thinks of human sciences as a modern disciplinary episteme is beyond the primary concern of this author but this was intended to display an undeniable fact about non-disciplinary approaches to disciplinary problems within human sciences by many non-secular or/and western social theorists who for the past 200 hundred years have been in critical engagement on issues that modernist have deemed relevant and significant. But their voices have not been heard and it is high time within the current intercivilizational phase of globalization we pay more systematic attention to all subjugated voices more earnestly. In this essay we only look at one single issue within his theoretical discourse on the question of ‘Conscience’ and hope this would pave the way for a more engaging dialogue on various aspects of Allama Jafari’s thought within academia which is mainly concerned with secular social theorists and analytical philosophers.

The Question of Conscience within Human Sciences

The modern thought has tend toward not only history but a historicized set of rational/sensual values which hamper our understanding about perennial questions or even the possibility of reflecting over eternal questions that could have eschatological significance for the perfection of self and society in relation to grand metaphysical concerns that all world religions are concerned about. This historicized frame of philosophizing and theorizing has disabled the modern disciplinary human sciences in regard to the question of ‘Conscience’ which is posed as an extra-cultural as well as perennial quest within the realm of reality which is considered as human universe. In other words, the secular founders of modernity conceptualized conscience within the framework of the established society, which resulted in an understanding of the human sciences, as a handmaiden of capitalist or socialist, nationalist or liberalist and various context-bounden ideologies that questioned the legitimacy or even the possibility of universal nature of human personality with conscience at its centre as this is what Allama Jafari considers the right approach should be founded upon. The primacy of conscience as a universal human faculty is not a valid axiom within the frame of disciplinary human sciences as what is of crucial significance within this disciplinary discourse is the dominant cultural values that are devoid of transcendence or revealed canonical considerations. In other words, conscience as the voice of Transcendence within the cordial dimension of man has turned into a colossal imagined entity called conscience collective that is historically historicized and self-regulated and not anchored in any celestial or transcendental prophetic tradition. There is no distinct debate on the question of conscience within human sciences as it is not relevant to think of it as an intellectually separate category but the best one can do is to fathom it as Leibniz did, namely as a moral force or an emotional reaction to felt guilt or injustice and joy of the mind because of hope for eternal blessedness. It is quite another issue that even this minimal Leibnizian concern with the question of conscience was initially neglected and finally within disciplinary human sciences forgotten as the main critique of Allama Jafari is that this is not only a moral upsurge but a daunting potentiality within human soul which could function as a discerning faculty along other faculties which we have at our disposal such as heart, mind, hearing and so on and so forth. However it should be mentioned that the derivative activities of conscience such as ‘consciousness’, ‘unconsciousness’, ‘perception’ and ‘self-consciousness’ are grandly considered within human sciences but within a historicized paradigm that disables us from fathoming a perennial core character for human person above all cultures, civilizations, traditions, religions, ethnicities, races, nationalities and ideologies which are all dependent upon that universal core that makes the image of man recognizable eternally and possible to recognize the humanity of the other even when the other is as different as possible. For Allama Jafari the question of conscience is a very relevant question and its unduly neglected importance within disciplinary human sciences of great significance and its role of prime enormity within the constitution of self, society and global world.

Allama Jafari on Conscience

As alluded earlier the disciplinary human sciences and philosophy is not devoid of debates on ‘conscience’ but the very fundamental textures of conscience within this disciplinary frame of reference differ profoundly with what Allama Jafari considers as the most significant aspect of human personality which is not but a reflection of conscience. The disciplinary approach to issues of values, virtues, vices, sins (although this is almost a forgotten dimension within value-neutral disciplinary sciences nevertheless there are moral philosophers who still pay scant attention within academia to this dimension too), and morality starts from what is called the ‘social’ and the idea of ‘conscience’ turns into a matter of an external force which is considered by Durkheim as a reflection of the collective conscience, namely a common social bond that is expressed by the ideas values, norms, beliefs and ideologies of the culture, institutionalized in the social structure, and internalized by individual members of the culture. Today the collective conscience of Durkheim would be termed social integration, because the concern is with
how units of a social system are coordinated. What Durkheim was, apart from its sociological significance, denoting with the concept of collective conscience is the fact that man has no inner compass in the theological-philosophical-metaphysical-transcendental-religious sense (and even it does it is not relevant for sociological theory) but he adopts forms and contents from the society and internalizes what he receives from the surroundings. But what is the quality or direction of this shared mentality is not of any significance for Durkheim as long as there is something to share and be likeminded and this is where Allama Jafari’s approach to the question of ‘conscience’ could prove intercivilizationally constructive and interdisciplinary heuristic.

The conscience is not for Allama Jafari a collection of unknown social forces which collectively work for the social integration in the face of anomic tendencies as disciplinary sociology claims. On the contrary, it has a distinctive individual seat that addresses human person primarily and then it does have communal/external/cosmic/universal consequences but the individual element is of utmost significance and could not be ignored as its neglect could cost the very existence of activity of human conscience as Allama Jafari understands it. The conscience is not only a historical phenomenon that could be historicized and ascribed to a definite social context in a past social fabric such as Feudalism or Iron Age. The conscience has specific activities and unique concerns to be involved with within Allama Jafari’s philosophical paradigm. Besides it should be mentioned that it has a profound metaphysical character but this metaphysicality should not hinder us from reflecting upon its nature, character, role, place and importance within the overall system of perception of reality by human agent. The conscience is like a distinct faculty within the cosmos of human self with various interior textures and levels of intensities depending on the ego’s engagement with reality in its transcendence and immanence or how deep the extreme finite has come to be in interaction with the tremendous infinite. It is not impossible to discern its activities both in relation to inner dimensions and interpersonal as well as social and global realms as all other human faculties its health/potency/capability/dynamism is dependent upon the level of cultivation one assigns to it. At its highest it could reflect the divine reality within and about us and at its lowest it could hold us morally responsible for the misdeeds we may commit towards ourselves, others and God. The conscience is where one holds dialogue with himself and it displays the reality of things (in relation to ‘I’ and how ‘I’ has related to others and the entire gamut of realities outside and within me) without any distortion. It has a prescriptive role as well as a guiding role in demonstrating to us that this reality we call life is not meaningless but a deeply meaning-laden project. It could demonstrate the two extreme faces of reality of human person in his best and his worst: conscientious and un-conscientious. One of the main reasons that we have not thought through the question of conscience within modern disciplinary discourses is due to the nature of this faculty which goes beyond the simple understanding of what does constitute the central problems of science, as it has deep metaphysical overtones. However this question is not essentially different from other essential questions such as the reality of law, time, space, material, motion and energy, as they all escape strictly positivistic conceptualizations. But the intellectual community does not abandon these aforementioned questions due to their metaphysical characters. On the contrary, it would be impossible to do science without these notions in some forms of practical and operational understanding. The question of conscience is no exception in this regard and its disappearance from the pantheon of human science discourses could not even be justified in accordance to ideals of modern/secular/disciplinary intellectual enterprise.

Vijdan or the Core Constitutive Element of Human Personality

To talk about Allama is to think of an institution with many departments and faculties or branches as he wrote almost on all aspects of human sciences, cultural sciences, historical sciences, social theory, theology, philosophy, cosmology, fiqh, law, political theory, art and literature, metaphysics and all relevant perennial questions that concerns man in his fourfold relations to God, Self, History and Nature. Here in this introductory essay we are not about to dissect all aspects of his philosophy or thought as the main purpose of this essay is to introduce Allama Jafari into the global intellectual audience. As in all introductory work the best one can accomplish is to extract one minor but important aspects of a philosopher’s thought and explicate it in some details which could hopefully shed some lights upon certain neglected questions within secular disciplinary discourses on human sciences through the vantage of Allama Jafari’s perspective. To achieve such a goal we have looked at the question of ‘Conscience’ within his frame of analysis and explored this question in reference to Allama Jafari’s critique in relation to the secular disciplinary discourse which, in his view, has been neglectful towards such a lofty dimension as well as to substantiate our claim that the absence of non-secular intellectuals within the canon of human sciences are detrimental to the emergence of global consciousness and intercivilizational dialogue.

One of the issues that Allama Jafari was critical about was the lack of intellectual debates on the question of conscience. He narrates an incident while he was in a conference in Europe when he was discussing with a psychologist about the importance of conscience and asking about the lack of essential research on this issue among the works of disciplinary psychologists and surprisingly the psychologist who was talking to Allama Jafari argued that the reason is very obvious as to delve into such a delicate issue may be dangerous for the well-being of individual health. (Jafari, 1381) Allama Jafari time and again argues that the importance of

Conscience has been forgotten within modern philosophical and social theoretical discourses and one need to reintroduce this eminent aspect into life. (Jafari, 1381. p 15)

But he is a philosopher par excellence as looks for ‘demonstrable reasons’ and rejects any debate which lacks intellectual theorems and convincing reasons. To avoid any logical pitfalls he looks at the current state of debates from his own point of departure and finds out that the question is a worthy problematique and erroneously has been neglected. To be able to reintroduce this

… excellent dimension into human life anew we need to corroborate the place of man in the scheme of things which have been reduced by secular thinkers into a link within an unknown chain of things. In other words, we need to reassume a core sense of personality for man. (1381. p 15)

As he writes for a modern audience he is not negligent about the question of methodology and attempts to demonstrate the foundations of his approach and displays in earnest how he has approached the question .Our methodology, he states, is

… composed of two parts: 1) introspection and 2) indirect introspective results that we receive from the research of grand thinkers such as Avecinna, Molla Sadra, Suhreverdi, Rumi, Attar, Shakespeare, Khalil Gibran, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Tolstoy and so on and so forth. (1381. p 16)

The question of human personality is of great significance for Allama Jafari and one can find resemblance on this problematique within four following western (not necessarily disciplinary) trends:

1. Humanistic Psychology which is mainly represented by intellectuals such as G. W. Allport, W. Bridges, J. F. T. Bugental, A. Ellis, E. Fromm, E. Gendlin, J.Gibb, S. Jourard, R. Lowry, A. H. Maslow, C. Moustakas, F. Perls, W. Reich, C. R. Rogers, V. Satir, W. C. Schutz, A. Wheelis.

2. Existential Philosophy that one may find among the writings of authors such as J. H. van den Berg, M. Buber, Albert Camus, V. Frankl, A. Georgi, M. Heidegger, R. D. Laing, R. May, J. Ortega y Gasset, D. E. Polkinghorne, P. Ricoeur, J-P. Sartre, S. Strasser, P. Tillich, I. Yalom, R. J. Valle R. J. & M. King, C. Wilson.

3. Transpersonal Psychology is the third trend which is best represented by thinkers such as R. Assagioli, F. Capra, M. Ferguson,
S. Grof, M. Micheal T. Roszak, A. K. Kanner, W. Van Dusen, R. Walsh, F. Vaughn, A. Watts, K. Wilber.

4. Archetypal & Imaginal Psychology could be found best expressed in the writings of the following intellectuals J. S. Bolen, J. Hillman, C. G. Jung, T. Moore, E. Neumann, R. Romanyshyn, R. Sardello.

Humanistic Psychology

Humanistic psychology is a psychological perspective that emphasizes the study of the whole person. Humanistic psychologists look at human behavior not only through the eyes of the observer, but through the eyes of the person doing the behaving. Humanistic psychologists believe that an individual's behavior is connected to his inner feelings and self-image. Unlike the behaviorists, humanistic psychologists believe that humans are not solely the product of their environment. Rather humanistic psychologists study human meanings, understandings, and experiences involved in growing, teaching, and learning. They emphasize characteristics that are shared by all human beings such as love, grief, caring, and self-worth.

Humanistic psychologists study how people are influenced by their self-perceptions and the personal meanings attached to their experiences. Humanistic psychologists are not primarily concerned with instinctual drives, responses to external stimuli, or past experiences. Rather, they consider conscious choices, responses to internal needs, and current circumstances to be important in shaping human behavior. Humanistic psychologists study the mechanisms of human thought. They focus on the structure and organization of what a person knows and how his thoughts, beliefs, expectations and interpretations affect behavior. Humanistic psychologists believe the concept of the "self" held by an individual influences their behavior and is related to their emotional state, well-being and judgment.

According to humanistic psychologists, the self can be viewed as a schema or organized body of propositions and descriptions of the self that guides the selection and interpretation of new information. The schema is a template against which information is compared. The information can be interpreted to fit a person's schema. Self-schemas act upon information and construct and transform it to be meaningful to the self.

Existential Philosophy

‘Authentic Existence’ is a technical expression within existential philosophy and psychology. An Authentic person is one who has a clear sense of his or her purpose in life. Within this position the consciousness is considered as a principal source of meaning as Existentialism understands the human to be challenged by the reality of temporary existence, and the view that life has no inherent meaning; meaning had to be constructed. Authentic human beings were those who could face existential futility and yet still go on to construct a meaningful life. Existentialism represents the philosophical root of the phenomenological approach to personality.

After WWII this philosophy gained a large following in Europe. The purpose of existential philosophy was to regain contact with the experiences of being ALIVE and AWARE. Key questions of existential philosophy are: What is the nature of existence? How does it feel? What does it mean?

The key issue for existential psychology is: All existence ends in death. Therefore, what is the point? The human challenge: Do we descend into nothingness or have the ‘courage to be’? All we have is existence, so existential psychology is about helping people to BE and helping people take responsibility for their lives.

According to the existentialists (philosophers or psychologists) human beings have no existence apart from the world. Being-in-the-world or “dasein” IS man’s existence. Dasein is the whole of mankind’s existence. The basic issue in life is that life inevitably ends in death. Thus we experience angst or anguish because of our awareness of death’s inevitability. So we either retreat into nothingness or have the courage to BE. The extreme of the retreat into nothingness is suicide but we can also retreat into nothingness by not living authentic lives.

From this perspective it is extremely important that we BE, that we live authentically. This entails living a life that is honest, insightful and morally correct. Authenticity is about living genuinely with one’s angst and achieving meaning despite the temporary nature of one’s existence. Life has no meaning, unless you create it. Friedrich Nietszche said the only logical response to this void and meaninglessness was to rise above it and become a superman (sorrowfully Nietszche went insane and died in an asylum!).

We are all responsible for our choices but even honest choices won’t always be good ones. You will still feel guilty over failing to fulfill all the possibilities in your life. Existential guilt, or existential anxiety or ANGST is inescapable. The existential approach also has much more negative undertones than the humanistic approach. It emphasizes powerlessness, loneliness, emptiness, and angst and admits that it is very hard to find meaning and value in our lives.

Transpersonal Psychology

Transpersonal psychology is the field of psychology which integrates psychological concepts, theories, and methods with the subject matter and practices of the spiritual disciplines. It uses both quantitative and qualitative methods; its central concepts are nonduality, self-transcendence, and optimal human development and mental health; and its core practices include meditation and ritual. Transpersonal psychologists' interests include the assessment, characteristics, antecedents, and consequences of spiritual and self-transcendent experiences, mystical states of consciousness, mindfulness and meditative practices, and shamanic states. Transpersonal psychologists are also interested in the embodiment and integration of these states into everyday life, as well as in the overlap of spiritual experiences with disturbed states such as psychosis and depression, the assessment and promotion of transpersonal characteristics in individuals, and the transpersonal dimensions of interpersonal relationships, community, service, and encounters with the natural world.

Transpersonal psychology is based on nonduality , the recognition that each part (e.g., each person) is fundamentally and ultimately a part of the whole (the cosmos). This view is radically different from psychological approaches founded on the premises of mechanism, atomism, reductionism, and separateness. From this insight come two other central insights: the intrinsic health and basic goodness of the whole and each of its parts and the validity of self-transcendence from the conditional and conditioned personality to a sense of identity which is deeper, broader, and more unified with the whole.

The root of the term, transpersonal or "beyond the personal," reflects this impulse toward that which is more universal than individual identity, as the root of the word, personal, comes from persona or the masks worn by Greek actors to portray characters, so the transpersonal could literally mean "beyond the mask." These masks both hid the actor and revealed the actor's role. Following this metaphor, transpersonal psychology seeks to disclose and develop the source and deeper nature of identity, being, and ground. It is important to note that nonduality and self-transcendence do not negate the importance of embodiment, individuality, and personalness. Transpersonal psychology's orientation is inclusive, valuing and integrating the following: psychological and spiritual development; the personal and the transpersonal; exceptional mental health, ordinary experience, and states of suffering; ordinary and extraordinary states of consciousness; the transpersonal aspects of modern Western perspectives, Eastern wisdom traditions, (some) postmodern insights, and many indigenous traditions; and analytical intellect and contemplative ways of knowing. For example, the integral approach continues to advance the articulation of this inclusive view, maintaining both the validity and the limitations of various psychological approaches.

Transpersonal psychology is a field of inquiry which includes theory, research, and practice, offering insights based on research, experience, and practices for evaluating and confirming or disconfirming its findings. It is scientific in the broad sense of the phenomenological or human sciences, including but not being limited to positivistic approaches. Overlaps between psychology and spirituality have been present in both psychology (e.g., James, Jung, and Maslow) and in the spiritual traditions (which have their own rich views of development, cognition, social interactions, suffering, and healing). Transpersonal psychology has highlighted this overlap, allowing further development of theory and applications.

Transpersonal psychology has benefits for both psychology and the spiritual disciplines. Psychology can expand toward a fuller and richer accounting of the complete range of experience and human potential, incorporating practices that speak more directly and completely to the depth of human nature. The spiritual disciplines can integrate insights and skills about human development, emotional healing, and psychological growth to deal more skillfully with various impediments to spiritual development, such as resistance to change and transformation, unresolved childhood trauma and abuse, the inner critic or superego as it appears on the spiritual journey, and spiritual awakening which is so disintegrating and difficult that it becomes a spiritual emergency. Spiritual traditions can use these issues as gateways, rather than obstacles, to self-realization.

According to transpersonal psychology, human growth occurs beyond the scope
and limitations of personality, and moves on to larger realms of consciousness. The transpersonal view acknowledges the possibility and potential of all human beings to achieve states which traditionally have been ascribed exclusively to eastern yogis and mystics, and includes the study of experiences and processes in man western science just recently has begun to explore. Within the spiritual teachings of the East and traditional medicine practices, these states have been known for thousands of years and thoroughly examined, such as psychospiritual growth and transformation by awakening and expressions of kundalini in hindu practice, charts of the chakras, the subtle energy centers in yogic techniques, and the science of Chi, the universal life force in traditional Chinese medicine.

Historically and traditionally, western psychology and psychiatry have focused exclusively on pathological features of the human mind, and rejected all forms of altered states of consciousness, spiritual experiences and processes as abnormal and undesirable. The field of transpersonal psychology is set on once again including the spiritual realm in western science, and regards such processes and experiences as basically natural and positive.

Archetypal & Imaginal Psychology

Its central aim is the development of soul through the cultivation of imaginal life in personal, cultural and transpersonal domains. The approach derives from existential-phenomenology and archetypal psychology. It also echoes themes expressed by humanistic psychologists over the past four decades, initiated by the work of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow and other archetypal or imaginal psychologists who have made strong arguments for the creative potential and role of human personality in the evolution of human existence. However it is the merit of James Hillman's archetypal psychology that brought back the question of soul to psychology. But as 'imaginal' psychology it cannot truly overcome psychology's positivistic, personalistic bias that it set out to overcome. In rectifying this heuristic problem the proponents of this position need to reevaluate the roles of metaphysic, myths, poetics, music as well as axiomatic dimensions within modernity, as the disciplinary social sciences seem to be oblivious about the questions of ‘belongingness’ and ‘connection’. The Archetypal and Imaginal psychology, on the other hand, evokes firstly the vision of belongingness and connection. It provides a framework for imagining a profound intimacy between ourselves and our world in ways that mainstream psychology does not address. The Archetypal and Imaginal psychology functions within a larger meta-story in which every human being is an integral part of a living cosmos. This organismic view allows for the possibility of communication between the living whole and its parts in a way that a lifeless clockwork universe cannot. Second, archetypal clients tend to be imagined in less pathological ways than in traditional clinical perspectives. The use of archetypal symbolism provides glimpses into the complexities of human personality and considers a wide range of human expression as acceptable. Psychopathology is less a label than an excessive or inhibited aspect of natural functioning. Third, as all people are constellated from a finite pool of elements uniquely configured in the birth chart, a person can preserve a sense of individuality without feeling alienated from the larger human community. Fourth, archetypal and imaginal psychology suggests that a client's situation is not simply the result of random and chaotic processes. The whole of the archetypal perspective reflects a world that is orderly and potentially understandable. This can help return to a client a sense of control in life, a sense that their own developmental process includes the apparent chaos as a part of their larger life pattern. Because life may feel out of our control does not mean that it is out of control. Larger guiding factors may occasionally wreak havoc with the ego's plans, challenging us to maintain a certain fluidity and adaptability to life's ever turning circumstances. This flexibility is necessary for the survival of the fittest, as those who best adapt to fit into the changing environment tend to thrive.

In each of these trends one can see the paradigmatic concern with the centrality of the human ego within the scheme of things that has somehow been denied since the inception of contemporary world-system. But they don’t take the centrality of human personality as an indicator of what Allama Jafari considers as conscience which is capable of organizing and guiding of grand psycho-socio-cosmic tasks. However it is important to realize that there are possibilities between these western trends and Allama Jafari’s concern on human personality and conscience as its core, as he argues that until one does not

… not recognize the importance of ideal ‘personality’ for himself as a cornerstone of desired ‘I’ it is impossible to achieve to the heights of conscience as the seat of ‘inner voice’ towards morality. (1381. p 22)

One of the main reasons that it makes metaphysical compatibilities between Allama Jafari’s and the abovementioned western trends complex (if not impossible) is the question of religious worldview which envelops the entire discourse of Allama Jafari’s reflection upon human existence. For him life

… is another name for being present before the Divine. If ‘I’ for whatever reason is unable or unwilling to stand before the Divine as a receiver of the grace he or she would not realize the authentic identity of his or her. (1381. p 33)

Having said that one should recall that with the aforementioned trends one can discern a religious position along the secular, transcendental and spiritual one too, namely the position represented by Jewish and Christian philosophers such as Buber and Tillich. These resemblances, similarities and convergences could be of great intercivilizational significance in furthering the question along new frontiers which could enable us in our efforts to establish a global ethics based on sound and authentic grounds.

An ethic devoid of sound and authentic grounds would not lead us to moral coexistence as the grounds such as trade, finance and politics when devoid of this authentic dimension themselves will be part of problems rather than solutions. Allama Jafari’s historical analysis and philosophical search leads him to be that

… man has an innate ability like a compass to find the pole but societies and cultures decide what the pole is for the majority. (1381. p 66)

In other words, we need to re-establish the importance of innate ideas within human person by re-evaluating the place of evolutionary theories which erroneously put the question of ‘innateness’ in contrast to ‘evolution’ of human capability. These two dimensions need not to reject one another as both are parts and parcels of primary and secondary dimensions of human reality as best expressed in Iqbalian ego philosophy.

Although when searching for building-blocks of a global ethics we should not
only look to what is conventionally called ‘cultures’ as there is evolving in our time a global civic culture, a culture which contains further elements such as the idea of human rights, the principle of democratic legitimacy, public accountability, and the emerging ethos of evidence and proof, the ideals and purposes of the United Nations and the consciousness of a shared earthly ecosystem, which shape expectations throughout the world as significant manifestations of this world culture nevertheless the indispensable principle of a global ethics needs a much deeper grounding than what the contemporary proponents of Global Ethics have been arguing. For Allama Jafari this indispensable principle is the ‘conscience’. As a matter of fact he argues that the only faculty

… which can bring us as human beings together and invite us to a life of harmony by establishing true and logical coexistence is … ‘Conscience’. (1381. p 78)

As the main aim of Global Ethicists is coexistence in a large scale and that could not be achieved if the peace is not achieved by individual person within himself. To achieve a true peace in all its dimensions first it must be admitted that man has a core and that core is innate and not forced upon from without (whatever the merits of that external force of exterior reality being the social, culture, or so on and so forth). He puts this idea in the following fashion:

Anyone who is able to harmonize inner and outer motives of the self he will be able to live a rational life that is not swayed by the ebbs and flows of passions. What is able to make this harmony become a reality is what we call ‘Human Personality’. (1381. p 81)

For Allama Jafari ‘Vijdan’ is capable of brining about the norms and guiding principles of normative discourses which may be of great significance in the regeneration of global ethics. But the conscience

… like all other aspects of reality has degrees and layers and the highest level of conscience [i.e.] … ‘Noble Conscience’ could be brought about through cultivation, abstention of carnal desires and endurance in the face of difficulties. (1381. p 250)

It is not difficult to realize that his emphasize upon individual role within the scheme of things may come into collision with many disciplinary discourses on human self and no wonder that within disciplinary discourses there is no essential debate on ‘conscience’ and this is exactly the point that Allama Jafari like the aforementioned four groups of thinkers attempts to make clear. Although he agrees that the emerging global civic culture seems to give rise to further new normative elements nevertheless he questions the guiding principles of these ‘normative elements’ and as a matter of fact inquires about what this normativity is consisted of.

Conclusion

As Allama Jafari has remarked the difficulty in fathoming the importance of conscience is due to the role of metaphysics in discerning the scope and depth of it within the parameters of contemporary modern philosophy which has turned away from metaphysical contemplations. But this is too bad for modernist secular thinking and this lack should not be pardoned and considered as a point of strength either as questions that burden the soul need to be answered and by ignoring them we cannot resolve the agony of the soul. To separate the thought from existence we cannot bring about creativity (in the sense that is related to the Creator) but illusion that is devoid of redemption (in the eschatological sense) and emancipation (in the socio-political sense). Metaphysics is the science that distinguishes between imagination/creativity and illusion and brings existential clarity in regard to our thinking process. But when we divorce the process of thinking and existence conceptually and consider these distinctions existentially valid then we end up in the land of illusion as we are today. In The Secular City, Harvey Cox (1968) has asserted that "the era of metaphysics is dead" and that "politics replaces metaphysics as the language of theology." Perhaps metaphysics is dead for Cox, who apparently subscribes to the doctrine of God's hiddenness. But obviously it is very much alive for Altizer, for Bishop Robinson, for B-psychology, for the Eastern and Perennial movements. It seems thinkers such as Cox may have completely misread the signs of the times, for it appears far more likely that we are witnesses today to a significant rebirth of metaphysics and additionally the upsurge of existential and neurotic anxieties demonstrate clearly that the soul of humanity is in need of communion with the Holy and no science better than metaphysics could address the intellectual soul of men. Even the contemporary psychology is now asking ultimate ontological questions about the nature of Being. And perhaps it was inevitable that psychology should do this. As Tillich has indicated, there are two kinds of anxiety—neurotic and existential—and only ontology can distinguish the one from the other. Neurotic anxiety is unreal, or rather has a misplaced object of attention, while existential anxiety is the result of a realistic analysis of the way things actually are. Clearly it is important to distinguish the two, and that is why Tillich complained about the lack of an ontological analysis of anxiety and a sharp distinction between existential and pathological anxiety. Some decades ago, at the end of the war, Jacques Maritain wrote what Allama Jafariª was stating in relation to the rediscovery of ‘Conscience’, namely what is essentially needed is a renewal of metaphysics. What is needed first and foremost is a rediscovery of Being and by the same token a rediscovery of love. This means, axiomatically, a rediscovery of God. He said further:

In perceiving Being Reason knows God.

That is to argue that the absence of a solid metaphysical debate on the role of conscience within contemporary philosophy and social theory itself is a sign that God is not only a name but a reality that its absence from our existence empties not only our symbolic universe but what we call life too. In not perceiving God we both lose being and the very core of what we have considered as Reason as the reason of being is deeply intertwined with the being of reason. One without the other is unthinkable and those discourses that have presented these three dimensions separately or in contrast to one another have actually extinguished the very voice within us that makes us humane in the form of a human. In the words of Allama Jafari

Conscience is the voice of God within us. (1381. p 308)

I would like to end my discussion on the pivotal significance of inner life by Allama Jafari by the following quote from Henry David Thoreau Walden:

"...it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone."

Notes

[1] Some of the most prominent names here are David Bohm, Karl Pribram, Rupert Sheldrake, Frijtof Capra, Marilyn Ferguson, David Peat, Joanna Macy, Charlene Spretnak, Stanislav Grof, Duane Elgin, and Ken Wilber, among others.

[2] The theory of fractals, for instance, and the imaging technology which has followed from it, suggests that the seemingly infinite complexity of natural forms-in the wave patterns of a flowing stream, for example-can be exhaustively accounted for through the mechanical iteration of fundamentally simple mathematical operators.

[3] Only two of Morin's major works have so far been translated into English (and one of them, unfortunately, over-literally [see References]. To date, Morin has published over forty volumes and countless essays, most of which have been translated into just about every language but English.

[4] Nor, for that matter, of his critique of holism (see Morin 1977, 123ff.).

[5] A technique of deep experiential therapy which combines accelerated breathing, evocative music, and focused body work to mobilize the unconscious (see Grof 1988).

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ª There is an interesting methodological guideline in Allama’s thought which bears deep resemblance to Maslow’s psychological principle, namely the former proposes a study of great souls of humanity such as Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Rumi, Imam Ali, Prophet Muhammad and Attar and the latter criticizes the modern psychological inclination in focusing too systematically on spiritually crippled people on discovering the foundations of human personality. In both of these approaches one can find similar aspiration which could be utilized within parameters of intercivilizational dialogue that aims to bring modes of coexistence by understanding the syllabus and grammars of human collectivities.

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