Staying at a Church & Integral Philosophy

I'm now in Vermont and I've had a wonderful conversation with my friend who's working to develop a spiritual and sustainable community based on the ideals of Krishna Consciousness and the teachings of the perennial philosophy in the Vedas. In Unity, Vedas are the primary unifying example for a path to achieve higher consciousness.

From a Buddhist temple in New Hampshire the previous nigh, I my next step was accepting the generosity of a Christian Church to spend the evening with about a dozen others. In its highest meaning, Churches and temples are examples of Sangha, fellowship, or community for the mystical communion, realization, and culture of the Divine. Within these spiritual communities, the authentic practitioners are the ideal for higher consciousness: the Buddha-consciousness, the Christ-consciousness, and the Krishna-consciousness that are grounded in the Emptiness, the True Self of no-self, the Godhead, and the Supreme Identity (according to Buddhist, Zen, and Sufi traditions respectively). This evolution of spirit involves realizing the Dharma, Nature, or Truth, which is that the ultimate I is Buddha, the ultimate We is Sangha and the ultimate It is Dharma. The ultimate confession is that "I am Buddha," I am Spirit; the ultimate I is Christ. Anything short of that is the lie of the ego, the lie of the separate-self sense. It's a timeless state, the ultimate Beauty. This is the synthesis of the art and science of higher consciousness and evolution.

The above description is inspired from Ken Wilber's A Brief History of Everything (2001).  I had a break from meetings on my second day so I started reading this book sent to me by my inspirational Aunt, the leader of her community's Sangha, the Buddha Buddies (Shepherds Town News Paper, Buddha Buddies, 2012, p.20)

I'd love to integrate some more of Wilber's philosophy in Unity. I included three of his models of consciousness in the Levels of Consciousness section (which includes seven other models), but I did integrate Wilber's analysis or application. Here are the highlights in a Brief History that are related to Unity:

The dominant theme of the Enlightenment was the great "web of life:"

"The Enlightenment developed a model of nature, including human nature, as a harmonious whole whose parts meshed perfectly and the unity of the order was seen as an interlocking set calling for actions which formed a harmonious whole." - Charles Taylor

"Such is the World's great harmony, that springs from Order, Union, full Consent of things; where Parts relate to Whole; All served, all serving; nothing stands alone." - Alexander Pope

The good news is the Enlightenment differentiated the I-We-It, but the bad news for the Enlightenment was that it did not integrate the I-We-It (art, culture, science/technology;  consciousness, morals/worldviews, objective nature; Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Pure Reason, and Critique of Judgment). These concepts were not harmoniously balanced and integrated, plundered by the aggressive It-domain, crowding out consciousness, art/aesthetics, and morals.   In the resulting modern age many people found themselves in utter horror standing in a flat and fadded universe, with no meaning, no depth, no interpretation, no beauty, no virtue, and nothing sublime. The cosmos was scrubbed clean of consciousness and value, and people's life-views looked hollow and empty.  

The Enlightenment was a quantum leap in human capacity, differentiating art, morals, and science—the dignity of modernity—that resulted in liberal democracy, feminism, ecological sciences, and the abolition of slavery. Now the task is to integrate: to inspire the Buddha-nature of I, cultural justness and Dharma (We), and the Sangha community in Churches and temples. (Wilber, 110-20).   This process is the art and science of transformational change.

Wilber introduces the Hopi Rain Dance as an example of how the Left-hand interprative appraoch wants to know the meaning of the dance. What does it mean for the native people? Why do they value it? The intepretive investigator becomes a participant observer and understands the Dance is largely a way to celebrate the sacredness of nature and to ask that sacredness to bless the earth with rain. The Right-hand path looks instead at the function of the Dance in the overall behavior of the social system. They conclude that the Dance is to create social cohesion in the social action system.  (p.87).

The Rain Dance is a great way to explain the postmodern transformational shift that we are on the cusp of. It's an example of how communities can integrate mind, culture and nature into a ceremony that can prevent deluges, alleviate drought. Wilber only uses the Rain Dance to explain the difference between the Interior and Exterior of our lives (p.107). In the context of Unity, I'm integrating how I see the future of Rain Dancing being an excellent example about unifying Wilber's Model. What I call spiritual climatology and weather working is a very practical example of the post-Enlightenment transformational change that I am trying to accelerate. Each community, in developing their adaptive capacity and social capital, should embrace shamanic weather workers to facilitate this process, for the community to achieve higher consciousness and the quantum-entanglement of inner consciousness with the outer environment.  This is therefore the unification of all four quadrants in Wilber's model. It's the individual Samadhi consciousness (Upper Left individual internal) that has measurable, objective effects on the structures of our brainwaves, chemicals, and biophotons (Upper Right individual external). This is combined with a cultural ritual (Lower Left, collective internal/culture) in order to create local and planetary stability, harmony, and healing (Lower Right, collective external/society). Wilber calls this the attuning of our actions with the biosphere.  It's about creating unity, harmony and achieving the highest states of evolution in all four quadrants.

I see the biophotons emerge as the unifying characteristic in all quadrants: as the experiencing of light in our consciousness (attunement with the real, the true, the good and the beautiful) (Upper Left); as the measurable expansion of our biophoton field (signature frequencies of our energy emissions) (Upper Right); as the matching of brainwaves at defines group consciousness (creating coherence and emphatic resonance)  (Lower Left), and as the non-local quantum effect that can change our physical environment—the rain that helps the crops, the calming of a storm, the acceleration of plant growth (Lower Right). 

Scientific studies in the past few decades have now shown that biophotons can be measured in each of these quadrants. This is truly profound. This is what's next for evolution. From our industrial-based informational age to a quantum-based informational age based more on inner consciousness (Left), where influencing the environment (Right) is part of this connection, interconnectedness, and "communication" with our environment.

This is my biggest disagreement with Wilber. I say that we can know the internal individual and cultural phenomena in ways that correlate to external, measurable stimuli. Disagreeing with awakened geniuses is dangerous territory, but Wilber writes, "the only way you can know my interior, my depth, is by asking me, by talking to me. You have no other way to get at my interior except to talk and dialogue and interpretation..." (p.99).   I disagree because this is now demonstrably false. Thanks to President Obama's BRAIN Initiative, researches can hook someone up to a computer, ask the person to think of something, and generate a picture of what they are thinking.  This is the frontier of brain research, as reported by Michio Kaku (a very Right-side thinker), The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind (2014). (See Kaku's YouTube video on brain imaging).

This is essential for dealing with the eco-crisis, one of the major downsides of industrialization and the ignorance of modernity. Hopefully, when communities know things like this, they will stop killing their environments immediately and integrate these practices of higher individual-cultural consciousness. And we can accelerate the dialectical process because we can finally show the people focused on the external (Right side) the external effects of consciousness (biophotons and brainwaves). This is how we act on this knowledge. This is how we transcend and include the previous levels of reason and empiricism. This is the edge of tomorrow. This is the coming transformation.

"May you live in interesting times." -The Confucian curse: if we don't act on this knowledge, then we all die.  (Wilber, 50-51).

Wilber defines Spirit not as the higher Self, or just Gaia, or just awareness, or just the web of life, or just the sum total of all objective phenomena, or just transcendental consciousness. Spirit, says Wilber, exists in and as all four quandrants, the four compas points, as it were, of the known Kosmos, all of which are needed to accurately navigate.  (Wilber, 75).

Spiritual climatology is the expression of higher levels of consciousness and Spirit emerging in a more balanced and integral fashion. It's an all-quadrant approach that's absolutely essential.  

This concludes the application of Wilber's Part One: Spirit-in-Action (p.1-120) to Unity. Up next: Part Two: The Further Reaches of Spirit-in Action and Part Three: Beyond Flatland.

With Warmth, Joy & Inner Fire