Rushing advances in neuroscience, computer power, and artificial intelligence are approaching the ability to model human behavior with remarkable precision. Extend these gains a bit and it's easy to envision a scientific revolution that automates human intelligence. Even now, scientists claim they will soon explain away consciousness and free will. Meanwhile, the Information Age is driving an explosion of heightened awareness, global crises demanding broader perspectives, and growth in

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... forms of spirituality. All this suggests a rise of "human spirit" that may swell into a "spiritual revolution" paralleling the scientific revolution above. It is tempting to think these two great trends could converge in time. But for the foreseeable future, they seem to be propelling us into the maws of a great conflict now shaping up between Science and Spirit. Are we humans simply a biological system for processing information? Or is there something about life and humanity that transcends sheer knowledge? The Scientific Revolution in Consciousness The traditional model of human behavior formulated long ago by Rene Descartes has served as a foil against which scientists have argued for centuries. Descartes proposed a theory commonly called "dualism," which states that behavior consists of two different types. "Simple" behaviors are deterministic in that an environmental stimulus automatically produces a response (touching a hot stove), while "complex" behaviors are unpredictable because they involve 1