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HERLIHY, JOHN (2005). Borderlands of the Spirit: Reflections on a Sacred Science of Mind. Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom. xi þ 216 pp. ISBN: 9780941532679. Paperback. $16.95. Reviewed by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos.
"The soul is the junction of the two seas ([Qur'an] 18:59) of corporeal and spiritual things."1
- Mulla Sadra
The modern world has categorically ruled out all forms of knowledge that are not derived through empiricism and rationalism, essentially abolishing all ways of knowing that transcend sensory experience and human reason. This has fomented the notion that science and religion exist as two separate and distinct domains. In earlier eras of the traditional world, whether of the East or West, North or South, these domains were interactive and influenced each other with mutual benefit. A human being in the traditional world could fluidly cross the boundaries of empirical modes of knowing to spiritual modes of knowing without confusion, as they were not viewed as diametrically opposed to one another. In today's predominantly secular environment the mindset has split these domains, making them alien to one another, as there now exists a deep-rooted antagonism between them. Yet it is in the borderlands of the transpersonal domain that the most inclusive modes of knowing and levels of reality reside.
The entire scientific premise is predicated on the assumption that sensory experience and the faculty of human reason are the sole arbiters of truth and that they alone can access the truths of the cosmos on their own terms. This predicament has persisted since the Enlightenment project, or the Age of Reason, from the 17th/ 18th centuries onward. In the traditional world, reason was understood to be a bridge between the two realms of logic and transcendence. Modern science has its place if it does not encroach beyond its domain of knowing and claim a monopoly to the whole of knowledge. It is worth recalling that science comes from the Latin scientia, which is synonymous with knowledge.
Rationalism has leveled the faculty of the Intellect (Intellectus) and at the same time elevated reason (ratio) as the principal faculty. In the contemporary world, they have become synonymous with one other, as the later has become substituted with the former, making itself an absolute, suggesting that there is nothing...