Supersymmetry and Integral Thinking
By Yasuhiko Genku Kimura

Buckminster Fuller defines the universe as "the aggregate of all humanity’s consciously apprehended and communicated nonsimultaneous and only partially overlapping experiences." James Jeans defines science as "an attempt at setting in order facts of experience." Indeed, the universe is a world of experience, and experience is the raw material of science. And experience, a concrete whole, is not limited to the world of quantity. Therefore, science, in order to fulfill its destiny, must expand its experiential horizon to include not only quantitative values but also qualitative values. As Glenn Olds clearly recognized and stated, value as such is a category more fundamental than space and time and includes both quantitative and qualitative dimensions.

The works of great mythologists such as Joseph Campbell show that the world of myths contains an immensely rich spiritual and intellectual understanding in which the wholeness of experience or the universe is vividly captured. The Japanese mythologist Shinichi Nakazawa calls the myth the "oldest philosophy of the human race." Therefore, to categorically characterize the world of myths and the people who inhabited that world "primitive" is the hubris of modernity. The so-called primitive people were not necessarily intellectually less developed than we are; rather, they were endowed with a different kind of mentality or consciousness, along with a wealth of universal wisdom some or much of which we have lost through our baptismal initiation into mechanomorphism.

We have indeed lost the wholeness of experience and our legitimate dwelling place in the universe largely through mechanomorphism. We can, however, regain our wholeness and our place in the universe by reintegrating the mythic mind through a higher mental synthesis. If we are ever to find our legitimate dwelling place again in the universe richly endowed with quality, value, beauty, and meaning, we must regain the wholeness of being through such reintegration.

The mythic mind operates on the logic of symmetry in which we experience symmetric identity with all that exists ("A is All"). The modern scientific mind operates on the logic of asymmetry in which we experience asymmetric nonidentity with everything else that exists ("A is A and is not not-A"). The scientific mind tends to consider the symmetric logic of the mythic mind nonsensical and dismisses it as primitive and irrational. However, even the hard-core scientist or engineer experiences a total symmetric identity with his child or wife whom he genuinely loves.

Human logic is the developed and acquired cognitive pattern of non-contradictory identification. Asymmetric logic primarily applies to the phenomenal world of visible and visua1izable "entities" wherein conceptual differentiations of experience are made through "thingification." Symmetric logic primarily applies to the noumenal world of invisible and unvisualizable processes which constitute the deep, structural, pattern-integrity of wholeness.

What is required of humanity today is to become proficient in both symmetric and asymmetric logic. What is required of humanity is to develop proficiency in the logic of supersymmetry wherein the symmetric and asymmetric logic integrally and symmetrically coexist to form a single, holistic mind. Then, the self will exist everywhere, for the supersymmetric, integral mind sees the self or the spirit everywhere in the universe. For the supersymmetric, integral mind this is an omni-spiritual universe, similar to the spiritual universe of the symmetric, mythical mind suffused with self/ spirit and infused with life/ spirit.

For the supersymmetric, integral mind, this is an omni-centric and holomorphic universe, in contrast with theocentric/ anthropocentric and theomorphic/ anthropomorphic universe of the symmetric, mythical mind, or mechanocentric and mechanomorphic universe of asymmetric, rationalistic mind. For the supersymmetric, integral mind, your self and my self are simultaneously selfsame and different, while both of our selves are integrant with and united in the universal Self of the cosmos.

The world of human experience in the cosmic matrix of the universal Self is neither merely personal nor impersonal but transpersonal, which intimately includes but essentially transcends the personal. The experience of the transpersonal self is absolutely communicable without being impersonal. The self/ Self permeates the whole universe when it is transpersonally experienced and conceived. In the transpersonal experience of the universe, the world of quality, value, beauty, and meaning becomes reintegrated into the world of experience and the world of science. This reintegration is the central locus where a new kind of science and a new kind of spirituality arise together with the co-emergence of a new scientific concept of matter and a new philosophic concept of spirit.