Theological Musings
by C. Grey Austin, Ph.D.
Installment XXIII -- May 1997
Will the Millennium usher in a new age of spirituality? A recent interview
with Ken Wilber (Science of Mind, May 1997) puts this idea in context. In
my view, no one integrates scientific and spiritual understanding better
than Ken Wilber, and so I want to share portions of the interview with you,
some quoted, some paraphrased.
* * * * *
Wilber speaks of the continuity of evolution: In the past 15 billion years
the earth has evolved from mineral to plant to animal to human, and evolution
continues. Each level incorporates the previous one and adds new elements.
"[M]atter and minerals were taken up and included in plant life, which then
added the capacities for growth and reproduction. These capacities were
taken up and included in animal life, which then added the capacities for
mobility and an emotional and sexual life. Those capacities were taken up
and included in humans, which then added the capacities for rational and
conceptual thought. Nothing is lost. All is retained, enfolded, included,
and embraced in each successive step."
Wilber suggests that the next stage of evolution, which we are already experiencing,
adds to rationality and the other capacities "transrational intuition," which
I understand to mean ways of knowing that tap our inner wisdom. These include
imagination, creative impulses, and dreaming, as well as intuition, incorporated
in a new age of consciousness which depends less on knowledge from the five
senses and more on openness to the reality that exists beyond sensory knowledge.
This perspective does not reject rationality or downplay it, as many New
Agers do.
Wilber's time perspective attaches no dates, millennial or otherwise. There
would seem to be no reason to expect that this stage of evolution would move
any more rapidly than previous stages. According to Wilber, some of us have
already begun to evolve into this new pattern, while others remain stuck
in a prerational mode that produces the pathologies of conflict, exclusivity,
and other ego-based expressions.
Evolution appears profoundly purposeful: "These patterns are not random,"
Wilber says, "the universe is obviously up to something. That something
very well might be spiritual. I certainly believe it is. I believe evolution
is the manner and mode of Spirit's creation."
"Following God's plan?," the interviewer asks, and Wilber responds by asking
which God? whose God? because "So many [conceptions of God] are childhood
hangovers, mythic projections of human potentials, or ethnocentric conceits
of a particular people." He continues, "...[E]volution can be following
a creative and intelligent drive....We don't necessarily have to get involved
in a theistic or mythic father figure or mother figure. The universe itself
might simply be an incredibly intelligent organism, in the process of growing
up. It shows purpose, design, intelligence, agency, and will, not imposed
on it from the outside by some external God, but growing from deep within
its very own being.... I think the very insides of the universe possess
a self-organizing drive, and I believe that drive, by any other name, is
Spirit's own evolution. Spirit is not something doing this from the outside;
rather, Spirit is doing this from deep within the universe itself, growing
it from within. Spirit is not an alien outsider pushing the world around,
but the very depths, the divine depths, of the universe itself. For just
that reason, Spirit is not something outside of you, either, but rather the
very deepest part of you. (emphasis mine)
Well, I could stop musing right now, because Wilber has stated so clearly
what I have been muddling around with as I discarded my infantile ideas about
God and searched physics and psychology and philosophy for better answers.
My search has led me to Wilber.
I could also pause to bow in the direction of Carl Jung who believed that
one gains access to God as one discovers one's deepest Self. And I could
document how Wilber's words echo the mystics of nearly every religious tradition
as they advise the spiritual seeker to "go within."
It seems best, however, to stay with the interview, because there are other
important questions to be asked and answered.
If Spirit is all-pervading, if Spirit is the
only reality, then why don't I see it right now? If ultimately there is
only God, then why do I seem to be left out? Why can't I see God right
now? And what kind of God would run off and hide on me like that?
Because "[M]y awareness is not open and relaxed and receptive
and caring[;] it is closed, contracted, grasping, and unloving. This is
not something that is being done to me. It is my own activity right now
-- my own 'sin' or delusion or dualism." However, Spirit is at work in this
very process of contraction. "The more we contract in the face of infinity,
the more it will hurt, until we uncoil in the vast expanse of a loved and
loving Spirit." That is to say, our hurt can be seen as a birthing or growing
pain, which Wilber calls "a first grace... a wake-up call." We respond by
replacing "inattention with mindfulness, self-contraction with open love,
resentment with forgiveness, anger with gratitude, carelessness with compassion."
And what of creativity?
"I think creativity is just another name for...evolution,
for emergence, for the very drive of Spirit to unfold its own potential....
The same force that produced apes from amoebas and adults from infants
drives the evolutionary thrust in general, and that drive is creativity,
which is just another one of the names of God.... Creativity is the deepest
impulse of your own greatest potentials."
Omniscient?
"...[I]f you don't know what you're going to do tomorrow,...
why should Spirit? Spirit is just as spontaneous and creative and unpredictable
as this universe itself, which is simply one of Spirit's manifestations....
Spirit's manifestation tends to follow various patterns,...but one of those
patterns is novelty, which means unpredictable, fresh, free. So Spirit is
not all-knowing in some rigid sense, because Spirit is making a lot of this
up as it goes along. Creativity is another word for 'Surprise!' And if
creativity is simply one of the names of Spirit, so is surprise."
If Spirit is the ultimate reality, what is the
use of individual or personal existence?
"Spirit realizes itself... only in and through... an individual
human person. Only through you can Spirit come to its own fruition. So
this little personal existence that we are living is not so little, is not
so insignificant. It carries profound value, literally infinite value.
And by the same token, it carries an infinite responsibility. [We] are responsible
for Spirit's self-realization. And therefore this life of [ours] must be
lived with great care and great concern and great compassion and great dedication....
We must engage our own evolution, our own higher development, our own growth
toward God, which is the only way God can grow as well."
WOW!!
* * * * *
Ken Wilber's most recent books are A Brief History of Everything and
The Eye of the Spirit.
* * * * *
Obviously, Wilber's concepts speak to me with power, but if your quest
is rooted in a personification of these cosmic forces, then you will find
a strong and mature concept of a personal God in Conversations With God:
An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 1, by Neale Donald Walsch. I find truth in
both portrayals.
* * * * *
The question of a personal God continues to confront me. I think I have
stated my position as clearly as I am able, and some of my readers for whom
I have the greatest respect, as they respect me, simply hold a different
view. From two letters, I offer the following statements:
"...there are two things that cause me to be uncomfortable with your writings.
One is that the "Life Force" which you say you would call God, does not
seem to have a personality. Like you, I believe in the immanence of God,
that what the doctrines call Holy Spirit pervades the universe, and is present
in all of creation. However, I believe that God has a personal entity, that
God has a stake in what happens in creation. I believe the God wants relationship,
that God wants to be in relationship with me, that God wants all of creation
to know and understand that God is. I don't get that sense from your writings
that God yearns for relationship with us, the creatures. That yearning is
the story of the Bible, the record of human's (sic) understanding of the
out-reaching God, straining to gather us into right relationship.
"The second thing that bothers me comes from the first. That is the responsibility
of relationship, both with God/Creator, and with all the Creatures. In reaching
out to us, God wants us to reach out to our fellow creatures, to embrace
them and become one with them. This is the root of our ethical understandings:
how we stand in relation to God and to those with whom we share the gift
of life. This is the essence of the oneness you write about, that, like
Paul, we all realize we are members of one body, that we need diversity to
accomplish the task of living, but that no member is more valued than another."
She recognized that I may have spoken to these issues in Musings that she
may not have read carefully, and so I had. But her concerns, her statement
of faith, needs to be on record. I have no quarrel with her, because her
faith is expressed and embodied in a loving person. She walks her talk,
as I hope I do mine.
Another thoughtful friend also deserves a hearing:
"Of late, my respect for those religions that teach a personal God has increased.
No, I do not believe in a God with a black robe and a big checklist of our
errors and repentances. But the concepts that are more vague, like Life-Force,
or Essence, or Energy, or whatever, have left me bereft of a RELATIONSHIP
with a god.
"After all my years and all my miles of journeying, I am slowly, haltingly,
trying to find and use practices, rituals, even schedules that will enhance
'relating" to Something Bigger Than You or I.
"I have felt Oneness at moments. I have listened to Intimations from a Knowing
much clearer than I could be. I have known days of Peace that makes the
day flow effortlessly. And I have marveled at Deep Mysteries and Gifts of
Gracious Transformation coming into my life unexpectedly. But all those
moments left me hungry at a buffet of Life that I believe can feed us with
no lack, if we but learn to connect....
"I sat down recently and read words in the 'Old Favorites' section of an
old, old hymnal. That personalized God they spoke of gave those people a
method of regular communication with that place inside where they could see
clearly, and accept Life's bad times with some equanimity. They had a relationship
with their God.... Our people in our Today world need tools to help them
establish a relationship with God."
* * * * *
I have no wish to argue these points. None of us has a concept that fits
the Reality, the Ultimate Reality. So perhaps the best we can do if to find
that approximation that best calls forth divinity wherever we find it, that
prompts us to respond in ethical and co-creative ways. After all, "By their
fruits (not their theologies) shall ye know them."
But I do wish I could communicate the vitality, the dynamism, the playfulness
that I find in my concepts of intelligent energy...
(Copyright 1997 by C. Grey Austin, all rights reserved.)
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