INTEGRAL - WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT
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From: Bruce S.
Date: Sunday, November 4, 2007, 12:07 PM
Subject: Integral - What is Enlightenment
ID: 258880

Hello, everybody --

Yes, it's been a while since I have posted here -- and thanks for all the good messages recently -- and welcome to all the new members -- and yes, I owe a few good friends an email. This place continues to grow -- it's a good sign when the garden unfolds so well without weeding...

For me, this garden metaphor seems very appropriate, particularly since my own growth seems to follow this kind of organic cycle. Sometimes the plant wants to blossom, sometimes it wants to grow leaves, sometimes it wants to deepen its roots. Maybe this latter option has been happening for me -- all the growth is beneath the surface.

Yes, I have done some travelling -- but mostly, I've just been working on other things, while these Resonance and Oneness issues just remain quiet, inactive on the surface. But there does remain within me a solid hypothesis about this emerging new energy -- what is important, what it includes, what it might take to release its potential.

So, I thought I would try to quickly sketch -- once again -- this general core idea, and briefly review what I feel is important.

In the subject line of this message, I mention two themes -- "Integral" and "What is Enlightenment" -- since it seems to me that these themes do review and encapsulate the core possibilities that are emerging for me.

What is Enlightenment

This phrase, of course, is the title of an interesting and valuable magazine, published in the USA by Andrew Cohen and company, with their very high-quality website at http://www.wie.org. There is a lot of great content there, as they have been offering for free most of their magazine content over the years.

I pose this phrase here, probably in the same spirit that they originally asked this question -- but for me, the question is interesting because it seems to me to combine traditional/classical spiritual realization -- as practiced and taught by saints and masters and yogis since the beginning of time -- and emerging new intellectual concepts and structure -- which are innovative, challenging, and not yet fully stable or mature. The WIE/Andrew Cohen people offer a lot of ideas in these areas -- and there are a number of other interesting and powerful voices contributing to this conversation -- including Ken Wilber, of course (who works intimately with the WIE people), and Gregg Braden -- who has been on tour with Bruce Lipton (author of The Biology of Belief), and who is currently promoting a new concept he calls "The Divine Matrix".

In 1944, Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, shocked the world by saying there is a "matrix" of energy providing the blueprint for the physical world. Recent discoveries show dramatic evidence that Planck's matrix -- The Divine Matrix -- is the missing link in our understanding.

To tap the force of the matrix, we must understand how it works and speak the language that it recognizes -- the secret of the Divine Matrix, as found in the coded language of our cherished traditions and verified in today's science.

- from a current conference brochure

So, just illustrating this "What is Enlightenment" question with Braden's comments -- I tend to be convinced that "enlightenment" -- the kind of enlightenment that we are reaching for today -- essentially as a collective enterprise -- involves everything that the saints and prophets have taught us over the years -- PLUS some profound new conceptual realization that is still taking shape, and is influenced by a wide variety of interdisciplinary sources -- including the kind of things that Gregg Braden is talking about. This "inclusion", I would say, is what Ken Wilber is talking about in his popular and insightful phrase "transcend and include".

So, just to bottom-line this issue -- for me, today, this question of "becoming enlightened" -- or "spiritually realized" -- has a critical conceptual/intellectual element -- that traditional spirituality has tended to ignore or reject. Put in slightly different terms -- in the past, there has been a tendency to pose "science" and "spirit" as polar opposites -- and the great voices of the spirit have seldom if ever also been scientists. This division has created a kind of polarization throughout society and cultural evolution -- we have scientific and intellectual people on one side of the divide, and spiritual and religious people on the other. Today -- we are called to bridge this divide -- to "heal" it, to seal it, to close it -- to bring all these aspects together, into one single context. This, it seems to me, is a critical dimension of our spiritual work today.

Integral

For me, this concept of "Integral" has become essential. To be useful and "enlightening", emerging ideas must be framed within an integral context. Without this integral context -- where everything is connected to everything else, and placed in the context of everything else -- our insights are fragmentary -- little stand-alone units of conceptualization, that may be helpful on their own, but which do not recognize the over-arching challenge and issue of our day -- which is to bring these 10,000 fragments that have already been shown to us, into a single coherent and comprehensive context.

And this is not to cast any sort of blame, or speak negatively. Creating this integral context, and fully realizing it in our souls and minds and beings -- is extremely difficult. In my opinion -- it has simply never happened -- not in the entire history of civilization. No saint, no prophet, no genius, no avatar -- has ever walked the earth in the context of this full realization. It has simply not been possible.

But today -- we are yearning for this realization -- we ache for it, we can feel it, it's all around us -- and more than this -- there is a growing sense that unless we do achieve this new kind of realization -- and awakening -- we will continue to be victimized by the consequences of this fragmentation. Despite our best intentions, and our deepest wisdom, to some degree, we simply remain blind. We need "wholeness of vision" -- and today, we wrestle with the challenge of fusing our diverse insights into unity.

Put simply -- we have to bring the pieces together -- because the fragmented context of the world today creates increasingly dangerous and destructive side effects and consequences. We are killing each other over this misunderstanding. So -- we have to "fix" this situation -- we have to overcome it -- we have to see how to do it -- and begin/continue this great task of "Weaving a World that Works for everyone" (as some internet visionaries have suggested: "www").

As regards the meaning of "Integral" -- it seems to me that what is emerging is an uncompromised instinct and conviction that this context we seek IS "the oneness of being" which we have so profoundly celebrated as the essential concept in all spirituality and religion -- and which is the primary and driving concept in JoAnn Kite's library of quotes, brought together here.

I say this with some emphasis -- because, it seems to me that this concept of "Integral" -- very much alive today in popular consciousness, in large measure because of the work of the WIE people, and Ken Wilber in particular -- is sometimes understood in somewhat less basic spiritual terms. For me -- "Integral means Oneness" -- "The integral vision frames all things in the context of Oneness, and interconnects all things through Oneness". This "Oneness" IS the prime concept of spirituality and religion -- and all of these things come together -- can come together -- in a single "transcendent and inclusive" context -- that brings together, as Gregg Braden and Ken Wilber have suggested, the ancient wisdom and the modern visionary science.

I think this point needs to be emphasized in the context of the contemporary conversation -- particularly because the Ken Wilber camp, and all their "Integral" projects -- tend to revolve around Wilber's notion of "AQAL" -- his theory of "All Quadrants, All Levels". This may be helpful or useful in some ways -- but, in my opinion, it can also be confusing -- particularly because the AQAL theory is not directly tied to Oneness as its basic framework and context.

So -- this becomes a critical point -- and one that adds to our challenge today. In my opinion, we have to say something like -- "Thanks very much, Mr. Ken Wilber, for getting this term 'Integral' into the popular conversation, and influencing the world; this is a great accomplishment. But -- with due respect -- it seems to us that we do need to move forward beyond (or around) this AQAL model, since, though it is suggestive, it is not directly grounded in the core Oneness through which, we believe, all integral process and concepts must be interconnected."

For me -- putting this somewhat bluntly -- Ken Wilber's core instinct for a "Spectrum of Consciousness" is very much on track, and is fully consonant with the concept "holon", an essential and elegant concept in the conceptualization of Oneness. But Wilber's later work, which attempts to connect this vision with some contemporary European "postmodern" philosophy -- becomes confusing, and not only loses its explanatory power as a psychological and epistemological model -- but also sacrifices its direct connection to and congruence with the core Oneness conceptualized for the world through the teaching the saints and prophets of all ages. And for me, this is an unacceptable and unattractive and counter-intuitive and misleading sacrifice -- and one that is not necessary.

Dimensions of Integral

So, pulling these themes together -- what I am suggesting is that we are moving towards a kind of collective spiritual realization, that could be described by this term "Integral", and which would have, among others, these main dimensions:

• A conceptual unity -- a unity of science and spirit -- of "right brain" and "left brain" -- brought together into a single conceptual framework.

• Full spiritual realization and awakening, as expressed in traditional spirituality and religion, combined with acute and powerful new concepts, that unfold from the divine ontology of Oneness. All things conceived in oneness, emerging from oneness, grounded in oneness, held together through oneness.

• A "integral politics" -- that is not based on some "theory" -- but which emerges for everyone everywhere through the deep common center that is shared by all things, and held together through Oneness. Relationships, in this context, are guided and sustained by "resonance". It's not that "we agree on everything" -- that would be sterile and tiresome. It's that where we do not agree, we work out our differences in mutually respectful and resonant ways, following the principles of "co-creativity", in ways that honor the presence and concerns of other people, and fully embrace the broadest possible spectrum of human awareness. An "integral politics" is a "resonant politics", grounded in oneness and the power of the divine energy (OM, Logos, Tao). The world is aching for a new resonant/integral politics -- and we are seeking the realization and unfolding of the power that will make this possible.

In this sense, the critical new ideas in spirituality are concerned with collective spirituality -- the shared common truths that contain us all. In a world of oneness, where everything is known to be interconnected, the spiritual growth and unfolding of the individual human being is intimately tied to the welfare of the broader human community, and, indeed, to all of life and being. Individual and personal spiritual realization, in this sense, become influenced and guided by this broader concern and awareness.

It seems to me that we are collectively moving towards this realization -- striving hard to conceptualize and understand, by an act of human effort -- and then, simply relaxing and realizing the gift of grace that emerges through the creative process, as we are influenced by a million other voices in our collective resonant field.

This realization is the destiny for which we are striving, and the core idea of the new world we are seeking to unfold.

May we be blessed and guided and protected in this unfolding quest.