Science goes on this way towards the particular, hence science can never conceive of God because God is the ultimate universal. God means the whole, the organic whole, and science and its concern is with the part, the ultimate part. You can see the ways of religion and science going in opposite directions. Science moves from the universals to the particulars; religion moves from the particulars to the universals. Hence they cannot agree; it is almost impossible for them to agree. They will not find any common ground where they can agree.

Science is bound to believe in analysis because analysis is the methodology for reaching to the particular, and religion believes in synthesis because synthesis is the ladder that leads to the whole, to the universal.

Sigmund Freud called his psychology “psychoanalysis,” and he was right in calling it psychoanalysis because his whole effort, his whole life was devoted to one thing: how to make psychology a science. It can become a science only if it becomes analysis. His insight was very clear.

Assagioli calls his psychology “psychosynthesis.” He is on the right track, for making psychology a religion, but he is not so insightful as Sigmund Freud His synthesis is not much of a synthesis. Sigmund Freud really analyzes, and what Assagioli does is to reassemble the parts divided by Sigmund Freud.

It is like the body of a man is divided into parts, cut into parts by a butcher, and then, just by putting those parts together, or gluing them together, you think you will get the whole man back. You are wrong. You will not get the whole man back; you will only get a corpse. That’s why Assagioli has not made much impression: he has got only a corpse. He is trying to undo Sigmund Freud; he is just putting together whatsoever Sigmund Freud has divided. But he is not himself a mystic, and without being a mystic you cannot reach to the alive universal.

The particulars are bound to be material, the parts have no life of their own. Life belongs to the whole. Life is the quality that arises in a miraculous way when parts are in a symphony with each other, in harmony with each other.

You can dissect a flower, but the moment you dissect it you are killing it too; and once dissected, you cannot put it together again. Yes, you can put it together materially, but the life of the flower will never come back. You cannot bring the original organic unity back to it.

Sigmund Freud’s work has left a great impact on humanity, because this is the age of science and Sigmund Freud helped psychology to become at least something closer to science. Assagioli’s idea was good, but he was not capable of fulfilling his idea: he promised something which he was not capable of. He was not a Lao Tzu or a Buddha or a Dionysius.

Dionysius knows exactly what happens in these two processes. He was not aware of modern science, but in these words he describes it accurately, precisely. From the universal you come to the particular; that is the scientific approach.