REFLECTIONS ON INTEGRAL SPIRITUALITY
A friend from the Living School recently invited me to watch a talk on Integral Spirituality given by Ken Wilber, a transpersonal philosopher and creator of Integral Theory, once called the Hegel of Eastern spirituality. Below, I highlight my own personal reflections on a few of his key points.
My initial response to what I saw as a casual dismissal of magical/mythical spirituality was to bristle. First and foremost, the move itself did not subscribe to the principle of transcend and include; additionally, it did not seem indicative of a non-dual perspective. Having said that, he did leave room for the paranormal - which may be a way of spiraling back to magical/mythical type phenomenon, but in a way that incorporates rational science and transpersonal psychology. As an example, a new wrinkle in quantum mechanics (as if there weren't enough already!) may grant support to retrocausality - the idea that the future influences the present just as the past does. It doesn't suggest information can be transmitted retroactively, but would allow for decisions made in the future to directly impact the present. Whether or not this phenomenon can operate on the macroscopic level is speculative. Much like superposition and entanglement, such a phenomenon may become unimaginably complex on the macro scale, and yet feasible if we can learn how to manipulate it.
This theory could have significant metaphysical implications - specifically that of Teilhard's christogenesis, with Christ as the Omega Point. It could very well be that Christ concurrently pushes and pulls history as the Alpha and Omega points. If true, this effect may present itself as the introduction of novelty or the operation as a strange attractor within sufficiently diverse and chaotic systems that draws them into higher levels of complex, coherent structures. Or it may manifest itself more overtly, such as premonitions or prophecy if internal or as synchronicity in the external world.
One last observation about magical/mythical spirituality: he noted it's this brand of religion the New Atheists seek to undermine, which makes sense. What interests me even more is that folks like Dawkins and Harris ostensibly became Atheists in the first place because of it. Honestly, it's not hard to see why. I would argue it's very hard for modern people to experience mystical awakening within the context of mythic spirituality. When a God of signs and wonders - presented in an inerrant text written thousands of years ago - is juxtaposed upon modern life, it's such a stark contrast one has to wonder where he went. In churches of an even more conservative bent, they may even add that the Word of God is the only place one can encounter God. It's easy for spirituality to be reduced to a system of beliefs, rather than living practices, when its deity is the sole property of the past. Then when those beliefs come into question (as they eventually do in this increasingly skeptical climate) and there's no inner experience of the divine, there's nothing left to hold onto.
As Wilber was speaking of quarks and strings, a rather esoteric thought came to mind. The levels he presents, Archaic through Super-Integral, do they themselves repeat - like octaves? Does the tendency from hyper-individuated, egocentric being to fully-integrated, unitive being spiral back upon itself periodically when life makes an evolutionary quantum leap into categorically higher levels of complexity? To illustrate, let's just began at the molecular level. Billions of years ago, some molecules cohered into integrated forms to make living cells. Some of these single-celled organisms sacrificed their own autonomy to cohere into more complex lifeforms. This pattern eventually led to us.
Each cell in our bodies is alive. They go about the business of keeping themselves alive: they respire, feed themselves, produce energy, manage their metabolisms, dispose of waste, repair themselves, and reproduce. They have a life of their own in doing what cells do. At the same time, they're more than that. They form an interconnected system, a system that rises to become more than what any individual or group of cells could ever be alone. The cells are holons: both autonomously themselves and part of a larger system and, in this case, guided by a force (human consciousness) they give rise to as an integrated system, but cannot control or even understand.
Do we now find ourselves in a similar place? If the pattern holds, will some of us sacrifice our own autonomy to cohere into an even more complex mode of being, i.e., the Body of Christ? Like I said, an esoteric curiosity, but I thought I'd throw it out there.