Are you getting enlightened or losing your mind? [antikvár]

Foreword "The deepest passion of the western world is to reunite with the ground of its being," wrote Richard Tarnas in his 1991 book The Passion of the Western Mind. This unquenchable desire to touch the Divine is universal. It is the source of the most sublime music, art, literature, and architecture of every culture. But if our most intense drives are toward the transcendent, why do references to "the spiritual" create such emotional and intellectual indigestion in modern medicine and psychiatry.' In our century, health care professionals have avoided religion and' spirituality like the plague. This has created problems not only for patients but for physicians as well. As a result of this avoidance, medicine has become one of the most spiritually malnourished professions in our culture. The reasons why the healing profession has avoided spiritual issues is rooted in the history of science. Only through great struggle did science finally escape the constraints and confines of the Church. Scientists discovered early on that a hands-off approach to religion worked best for both sides. They learned to leave "the spiritual" to religion as they claimed "the physical" for themselves. This separation has been disastrous. It has led to the belief that there are basically two ways in which we can live our lives. We may, on the one hand, choose to be rational, intellectual, analytical, and scientific. On the other hand, we can choose the path of intuition, religion, and spirituality.