If we start with these fundamental human problems—problems, for example, such as: who are we? What is the nature of human nature? How should we be related to the planet on which we live? How are we to live together satisfactorily? How are we to develop our individual potentialities? What is the relationship between nature and nurture? If we start with these problems and make these central, we can obviously bring together information from a great number of, at present, completely isolated disciplines. And my own feeling is that it probably is only in this way that one can create a thoroughly integrated form of education.
How can we attempt to describe, for example, a mystical experience? What we need is some kind of language—which will have to be created for us by a major poet; a Pontifex Maximus—some kind of language which will permit us to speak of this profoundly personal experience, both in terms of philosophical concepts and in terms of biochemists (who, after all, are involved in the most elaborate biochemical processes), and in terms of theology. At present, these are three totally separate and unconnected vocabularies. And our problem is somehow to discover a poetic vocabulary—a literary, artistic vocabulary—which shall make it possible for us to pass without any serious jolt from one point of view to the other; from one universe of discourse to the other universe of discourse.
Our minds have objective knowledge of the outer world and subjective experience, and we must, as I say, discover methods for bringing these separate fields together.