The universe seen from within is Light; seen from without, by spiritual perception, is thought.  - Rudolf Steiner

The word "Enlightenment" has been used to designate two distinct traditions: the Enlightenment tradition of Western civilization, originating in the Age of Reason of the 17th and 18th centuries; and the Enlightenment tradition of the world’s esoteric spiritual teachings, especially of the East, and particularly of Buddhism. The Enlightenment of the Age of Reason denotes an intellectual awakening, wherein the educated public discovered the power of reason, and thereby freedom from the shackles of the religious dogmatism that had dominated Western culture for centuries throughout the preceding Middle Ages. This Enlightenment was the secularization of the human mind. The Enlightenment of esoteric, spiritual traditions denotes the individual’s deep experiential process of spiritual awakening, of "being awake and alight." It is the sacredization of the human being. Although it refers to the luminous experience of individual human beings, spiritual enlightenment has engendered multitudinous cultural traditions around the world, spanning from paradigmatic ways of communal, ethical practice to what constitute the fundaments of culture, such as philosophy, literature, art, and music. I call the spiritual enlightenment of esoteric traditions the "First Enlightenment" and the intellectual enlightenment of the Age of Reason the "Second Enlightenment." The Third Enlightenment designates the higher unity of the First and Second Enlightenments, existing as a unified, universalistic cosmovision, co-evolutionary with a new mode of consciousness.

Knowledge is co-evolutionary with consciousness. The edifice of knowledge that is developed by a particular age is concordantly expressive of the guiding consciousness of that age. Within the evolutionary movement of human consciousness, the modern period, spanning from the Renaissance to the present age and epitomized by the Age of Reason, is the period wherein a large segment of humanity for the first time has come to experience itself as separate from Nature and Nature as separate from Spirit. Before the modern period, humanity experienced itself inside Nature and Nature as permeated by Spirit. During the modern period, humanity to an increasing degree objectified Nature, experienced Her as outside of itself, and saw Spirit, if existing, as transcendent both to itself and to Nature—as "supernatural." Humanity was no longer regarded as wholly a part of Nature suffused with Spirit, but at least partly a stranger to Nature and to Spirit. That is, humanity in the process of its enworldment lost the experience of its embodiment of Nature and Spirit.

Modern consciousness is conceptuality-centered, whereas the consciousness of the preceding periods is perceptuality-centered. This is exemplified by the difference between the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems of astronomy. For pre-modern consciousness, conceptual formulations (the geocentric system) served to validate direct human perceptions (that the sun, the moon, and the planets appear to circle around the earth), while, for modern consciousness, human perceptions based on systematic observations serve to verify or falsify conceptual formulations (the heliocentric system). Heliocentricity is imperceptible to humanity so long as it remains on the Earth; it exists, and can only exist, in the imagination, in the abstract. Pre-modern consciousness experienced the unity of humanity and Nature-cum-Spirit in its perceptuality, while conceptuality was experienced as an integral part of perceptuality. Thus, reality was perceptually accessed. Modern consciousness lost the experience of the unity of humanity and Nature and of humanity and Spirit in its perceptual reality, and tried to regain that lost unity through conceptual imagination-abstraction. Thus, reality was conceptually and abstractly accessed, and the faculty of reason became the primary means of accessing reality.

In contradistinction to conceptuality-centered and perceptuality-centered modes of consciousness, the esoteric spiritual traditions of the world, such as rDzogs-chen, Atiyoga, Zen, Kabbalah, or esoteric Christianity, present another distinct mode of consciousness, which is the spirituality-centered mode of consciousness.

In the movement of consciousness, spirituality is the capacity for atemporal awareness; perceptuality is the capacity for immediate, temporal awareness; and conceptuality is the capacity for mediate (language-mediated), temporal awareness. Spirituality inheres the potential for atemporal awareness; perceptuality inheres the potential for immediate, temporal awareness; and conceptuality inheres the potential for mediate, temporal awareness.

"Enlightenment" in the world’s esoteric spiritual traditions is the awakening of spirituality, of atemporal awareness, which transcends the temporal-spatial awareness of both conceptuality-centered and perceptuality-centered modes of consciousness. "Enlightenment" in the Enlightenment tradition of Western civilization is the awakening of conceptuality-centered consciousness as distinct from perceptuality-centered consciousness. The First Enlightenment is the efflorescence of spirituality, while the Second Enlightenment is the efflorescence of conceptuality.

Unlike the Second Enlightenment, which took place in an identifiable period in history, the First Enlightenment is as old as or even older than known history. For this reason, Aldous Huxley called this Enlightenment tradition the perennial philosophy. This is not the tradition against the authority of which the Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers revolted. This is not the exoteric tradition, which medieval Aristotelian scholasticism epitomizes, nor the popular tradition of the masses, which the Catholic Church represents. This is the tradition of esoteric spirituality, of what Ken Wilber and others call deep spirituality. This is the tradition, for instance, of the esoteric Taoism in which it is stated that "The Tao that is atemporally abiding in its atemporal abidingness cannot be reduced to any predications in language; the naming in language which is temporal cannot capture the atemporally abiding Tao in its atemporal abidingness (translation by the author)." This is the tradition in which the transmission-preservation of essential insights into reality-qua-reality involves listening to and understanding silence-qua-language in both transmission and preservation.

The consciousness of the First Enlightenment permeates world history, expressed in language, art, and music in a manner that is consistent with a particular flow-pattern of consciousness characteristic of an individual or a culture. However, in-depth studies of the diverse expressions and traditions of the world’s esoteric teachings reveal that there is an experience that underlies them all. That experience is one of being alight with spiritual or noumenal light that suffuses the whole of existence, simultaneously transcendent of and immanent in the universe. That experience is the atemporal awareness of wholeness, of undifferentiated continuum, of fusional complementarity, of the All that is One.

The First Enlightenment is the unfolding of spirituality, of the possibility of atemporal awareness, which the noted Buddhist scholar Herbert Guenther terms "originary awareness." In originary awareness, reality-as-wholeness is experienced as "intelligent" in the sense that the universe as known is identical with the intelligence that knows it. In originary awareness, the universe is experienced as being atemporally aware of itself in its wholeness. This intelligent, noumenal universe thinks thinking in its supraconscious cognitive intensity, which thinking’s thinking is that which engenders the phenomenal universe. The intelligence as which the universe exists is self-excitatory. In Western spiritual tradition, this self-excitatory intelligence of the noumenal universe is called by various names such as "God," "Mind," or "Consciousness."

Therefore, for instance, when the Hermetic text The Kybalion states that "The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental," it does not mean by the term "Mind" the mind in the Cartesian duality of mind and matter, nor does it mean by the term "mentation" the reductive-dualistic-thematic-mentation of the conceptuality-centered consciousness. By Mind The Kybalion means the excitatory intelligence of the universe that thinks the thinking or the mentation that lights up the lighting-up process itself as the phenomenal universe in its luminously undivided and indivisible wholeness.

The integration of spirituality and science is tantamount to the integration of spirituality and conceptuality within a higher or more holistic mode of consciousness, which is the consciousness of the Third Enlightenment. Before discussing the Third Enlightenment, however, let us review the great contributions to the evolution of consciousness of the two Enlightenment traditions:

The major contributions of the First Enlightenment are:

1. The awakening of atemporal, originary awareness, which transcends the temporal-spatial awareness of both the conceptuality-centered and perceptuality-centered modes of consciousnesses.
2. The awareness of the universe as being intelligent with its excitatory intelligence and in its ecstatic, supraconscious cognitive intensity.
3. The awareness of the universe as an undivided and indivisible whole wherein there is no separation between the "I" and the "world."

The major contributions of the Second Enlightenment are:

1. The abandonment of and freedom from presumptive religious-philosophic authority in the matter of knowledge inside the awakened recognition of the power of reason.
2. The creation of the self-sufficient and self-sustaining scientific method (and of the consciousness and paradigm of methodological orientation itself) that has a built-in mechanism for identifying and correcting errors through the triumvirate of observation, mathematical description, and experimentation.

Physical science starts with what is given to the human sense awareness and with the assumption that what is given to sensory-temporal awareness is ontologically primary and ultimately real. Spiritual science starts with what is given to the spiritual awareness and with the assumption that what is given to spiritual-atemporal awareness is ontologically primary and ultimately real. According to physical science, the universe consists of physical entities, which are presumed to be sensorially observable and conceptually comprehensible. For spiritual science, the universe is seen as an undivided and indivisible wholeness or continuum, not an aggregate of entities but a lighting-up of universality (one) as particularity (many)—of ultimate simplicity as dynamic multiplicity.

The physicist Sir James Jeans defines science as "an attempt at setting in order the facts of experience." The design scientist Buckminster Fuller defines [the] Universe as "the aggregate of all humanity’s consciously apprehended and communicated nonsimultaneous and only partially overlapping experiences." Experience, as Alfred North Whitehead points out, is the raw material of science. However, experience must mean the whole range of human experience, including perceptual, conceptual, and spiritual experiences. Science as we know it today is the science of the manifest universe of dynamic multiplicity, limited only to the range of perceptual and perceptible experiences. A holistic science of the Third Enlightenment will integrate the perceptually unmanifest universe of ultimate simplicity with the perceptually manifest universe of dynamic multiplicity; it will integrate the spiritual with the physical within a seamlessly unified set of formulations.

The seed of a Third Enlightenment science has already been demonstrated, albeit in a mythopoeic language, by ancient Tibetan rDzogs-chen ("sublime wholeness") thinkers from Padmasambhava (the eighth century) to Klong-chen rab-’byams-pa (the 14th century). For instance, in gSang-snying (author unknown) we find the following passage:

E-ma-ho:

This marvelous and wondrous fact

Is the mystery of all perfect Buddhas:

From that which has no origin, everything (that is) has taken its origin;

Yet in so having taken its origin, it remains that which has no origin.

E-ma-ho:

This marvelous and wondrous fact

Is the mystery of all perfect Buddhas:

From that which never ceases all that ceases (seems to come);

Yet in ceasing it remains that which never ceases.

E-ma-ho:

This marvelous and wondrous fact

Is the mystery of all perfect Buddhas:

From that which has no locus all that is located comes;

Yet in being so located it remains that which has no locus.

E-ma-ho:

This marvelous and wondrous fact

Is the mystery of all perfect Buddhas:

From that which is unobjectifiable all that is objectifiable comes;

Yet in being so objectifiable it remains that which is unobjectifiable.

E-ma-ho:

This marvelous and wondrous fact

Is the mystery of all perfect Buddhas:

From that which neither comes nor goes all that comes and goes proceeds;

Yet in so coming and going it remains that which neither comes nor goes.

E-ma-ho is an untranslatable Tibetan word, expressive of the sense of wonder and awe, which arises when one comes to know the universe in its wholeness as the Matrix of Mystery. There is a way of knowing that does not diminish but only increases our sense of wonder and awe, even as when a sphere increases its volume, it touches more and more of the universe that surrounds it. With modern, reductive-empirical-objectified scientific knowledge, which is divorced from the world of meaning and quality, from the whole of the unobjectifiable universe, we tend to lose and have in fact lost wonder. The Third Enlightenment will restore a sense of wonder and awe, while it expands and deepens our knowledge of the universe. The universe once again becomes sacred and luminous.

The first stanza intimates that the universe is self-originating, not dependent on an external principle for its origination: this is not a created universe, but a continuously self-creating universe. The second stanza intimates that the reality of the universe is the complementarity of the atemporal and the temporal, of equilibrium and non-equilibrium, and that the multitudinous phenomena of the universe are the atemporal being present as the temporal. The third stanza suggests that the universe is non-local and indivisibly whole, and that the non-locality of the universe-as-such is ceaselessly present in all of its seemingly localized manifestations. The fourth stanza suggests that the objectifiable world, coextensive with the dichotomization of subject-object, is but a tiny ripple in the vast ocean of creativity, which is thinking’s thinking as the builder of the universe. The fifth stanza intimates that the universe is alive, and that life is ceaselessly present in the comings and goings of birth and death. Thus, gSang-snying, the rest of the rDzogs-chen, and the other esoteric Buddhist literatures presaged a non-local and undivided universe of wholeness and complementarity, such a one as is only inferred by the quantum physics of today.

The modern scientific tradition represents the paradigm of understanding the physical or the divisible-measurable-quantifiable aspect of the universe from without; it is a paradigm of outerstanding. The rDzogs-chen tradition represents the paradigm of understanding the spiritual or the indivisible - immeasurable - qualitative aspect of the universe from within; it is a paradigm of innerstanding. Through the understanding that is the synthesis of outerstanding and innerstanding, the excitatory intelligence of the universe as manifest in human intelligence realizes the primordial, patterning pattern (the implicate order) as which thinking’s thinking thinks to engender the phenomenal universe (the explicate order), which pattern underlies and permeates the whole universe as the Law of Nature. This path of synthesis unites spiritual and physical sciences within a single paradigm of understanding the universe in its wholeness without losing the sense of wonder and awe, and without losing the intellectual rigor characteristic of science-qua-science.

That which makes a piece of knowledge a system of science is (1) an immediately apprehended factor and (2) an inferred theoretical component. That is, science is a knowledge a priori (a theory or hypothesis), confirmed by a knowledge a posteriori (an experimental or experiential verification based on immediate apprehension). The paradigm of physical science limits its immediately apprehended factor to that of sensory perception, while the paradigm of spiritual science limits its knowledge to that of spiritual awareness (a knowledge a posteriori) without formulating a theoretical component (a knowledge a priori). The Third Enlightenment paradigm expands the realm of immediate apprehension to spiritual awareness, which includes sensory perception, while formulating a theoretical component to establish a bona fide system of science. In the terminology of Western theological tradition, the Third Enlightenment paradigm brings back the Creator to the scientific discourse concerning Creation.

The time is ripe for the birth of the Third Enlightenment paradigm, which will not only transform the field of science but also will facilitate the process of healing the fragmentation of human consciousness, which is the fundamental cause of division, violence, and suffering existing in the world.

Partial References:

1. Guenther, Herbert, Matrix of Mystery: Scientific and Humanistic Aspects of rDzogs-chen Thought, Shambhala, 1984.
2. Guenther, Herbert, Thig-le, Ultimate Simplicity as Dynamic Multiplicity – a singulare tantum, unpublished manuscript, 2000, 2001, 2002.
3. Kimura, Yasuhiko Genku, "The Third Enlightenment: Towards A New Universalistic Vision of Science and Spirituality," The Cosmic Light, Vol. 2 No. 2, The University of Science and Philosophy Press, 2000.
4. Kimura, Yasuhiko Genku, Think Kosmically Act Globally, The University of Science and Philosophy Press, 2000.
5. Northrop, F. S. C., The Meeting of East and West, Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1946.
6. Russell, Walter, The Secret of Light, The University of Science and Philosophy, 1947, 1994
7. Russell, Walter, The Universal One, The University of Science and Philosophy, 1926, 1974.
8. Whitehead, Alfred North, Process and Reality, Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1929.