I have been drawn in my later years into the currently popular study of human consciousness with not a great deal of time spent in scientific research in the physical sciences, much less in research in the area of human consciousness. I have enjoyed an excellent training in physics through my doctorate at MIT, as well as in philosophical and theological studies in Jesuit university settings, and have long read and reflected upon the areas of intersection between these diverse fields. Only within the past several years, however, have I begun to investigate some of the many current approaches to the study of human consciousness. My present focus is on those approaches, which have, it seems to me, been least explored because they are considered 'subjective' or 'pre-scientific' or 'folk psychology.'
'First-person' approaches, as over against the 'scientific' or 'third person' approaches appeal to me, no doubt, because of the practice of Jesuit or Ignatian spirituality over a long period of my life as a member of the Society of Jesus, founded by St. Ignatius Loyola in the mid-sixteenth century, and known as Jesuits. This particular spirituality, which is very centered upon the experience of self in dialogue with what is believed to be the divine transcendence, is very concrete and full of use of the imagination, for the Jesuit theme is 'finding God in all things.' The primary experience of God for Jesuits is found, clearly, in Jesus Christ, but this experience is quite congruent with an encounter with the divine in everything.
Thus, my spiritual experience as a Jesuit has not been of an 'other worldly' tradition nor, on the other hand, is it a pantheistic approach. It has been, at the same time, a spirituality which focuses very much on one's own self in communication with others and the world and in all with God.
Senior Research Fellow in Residence
Sacred Heart Jesuit Center
300 College Avenue, Los Gatos, CA 95030
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