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The Impermanence Of Being: Toward A Psychology Of Uncertainty

This article adopts Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine’s assertion that uncertainty is an inherent cosmic expression, deeply embedded within the core of reality. The deep psychic expression of this experience is anxiety which, following Heidegger, is conceived not as pathology but rather as an essential state of being emerging simultaneously with uncertainty. This article examines uncertainty and its child, anxiety, as a necessary consequence of a creative universe and begins to formulate a psychology in accordance with such a reality. I will show that such a psychology must inevitably be transpersonal because an unpredictable universe transcends the merely unknown and raises the issue of the unknowable. This is an inherently spiritual formulation that directly addresses the experience of mystery and the nature of faith. This article explores the possibility for a psychology in which uncertainty is regarded not as a limit but as an expression of the boundless creativity inherent in the universe.

Key Words: uncertainty • unpredictability • anxiety • crisis • authenticity • chaos • new scientific paradigm

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