Postcards from the Frontiers of an Emerging Paradigm

*the below post is an edited transcript of a talk I gave at the 2008 Integral Theory in Action Conference

My thanks to the ITC team for giving me an opportunity to speak here at such short notice. I’ve been holed up in a cabin in the mountains working on a book, and only recently found out about this conference, so I was delighted and honored that they were willing to squeeze me into the lineup.

For those of you who don’t know me, my connection to the Integral world is that I was a student of Andrew Cohen’s for 13 years. I spent the last five of those years as part of a small leadership team helping to guide the individual and collective spiritual development of his international community of students. I also spent eight years as an editor and writer for What Is Enlightenment? magazine, and through that work, had the opportunity to develop a friendship with Ken Wilber and immerse myself in the work of the integral community at large.

I also need to confess that, although this is a scholarly gathering, I’m more of a mystic than a scholar, and as a result my interest is really in helping people transform at the deepest level of their being. So the thoughts I’ll be presenting here today are not based on a nuanced scholarly dissection of some aspect of Integral Theory, but on a mystic’s reading of the theory and my broad impressions of how certain elements of it are shaping the transformational culture of the integral community. So, if I get some nuances wrong, I’ll leave plenty of time at the end for the scholars among you to correct me.

To begin my reflection, I’d like to ask you to think about a spiritual figure whom you revere and look to for inspiration; perhaps a saint of the distant past, like Jesus or the Buddha or Saint Theresa or Rumi; perhaps a sage of recent history, like Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, Anandamayi Ma or Suzuki Roshi; or even a saint or sage of the present, like Amma or the Dalai Lama or Thomas Keating.

What is it about this figure that you most admire? What is it that causes you to look to them as a source of spiritual inspiration?

Is it how you imagine their interiors to be? In other words, do you imagine that they feel very spiritual and peaceful and blissful and expanded on the inside, and that’s what makes you look up to them? Is the source of your respect and admiration based on your belief that they have access to glorious inner states of consciousness?

Or is it something about who they are? About how they show up in the world? About the wisdom and generosity conveyed in their actions? About the strength and singularity of their character? Their unwavering stand for the holiness they’ve discovered. About the divinity that seems to infuse their personality and shine through in their every expression?

I’m guessing that unless you are even more of an altered state junkie than I used to be, your answer is somewhere in the domain of the latter. I think it’s safe to say that when we conclude that someone is a sage or saint or even a deeply spiritual person, what most of us mean by that is that their humanity has undergone a transformation, that on some fundamental level, their values have changed, their identity or sense of self has shifted in a way that deeply changes who they are and the way they behave.

I don’t think there is anything groundbreaking about the point I’m making here. I think this is what we might call spiritual common sense. It rings with our most basic spiritual intuitions and sensibilities.

But, in the contemporary spiritual marketplace—including the world of Integral Theory and Practice—there is actually a lot of confusion on this point. In the contemporary spiritual arena at large, we find prominent spiritual figures suggesting that enlightenment has nothing to do with behavior, that it is a purely inner realization that does not affect the personality at all. Or that if it does affect our behavior, it would simply make us a bit calmer and more equanimous (perhaps like a time-released lifelong dose of Prozac). But that it certainly has nothing to do with morality. And these are just a few examples of the many popular spiritual ideas that run counter to what I’m calling spiritual common sense.

For the purposes of my talk here, though, I’ll leave aside these broader currents of confusion, and focus on those that specifically arise from Integral Theory.

As I’m sure you all know well, one of the core tenets of Integral Theory is the notion of Lines of Development. The basic idea is that human evolution or development is not one thing. You can’t ask: what stage of development is Craig at and hope to get a general answer that means anything, because we are each more developed in some areas than others. I might be a great abstract thinker but have poorly developed social skills. Or I might be a world-class athlete who can’t even read or write.

Like most of the basic tenets of Integral Theory, this also has a ring of common sense to it. In fact, at first glance, it actually seems so obvious and undeniable that one might even wonder how it made it into one of the world’s leading-edge theoretical models at all. Is it really saying anything other than what our grandmothers all knew—that we all have different strengths and weaknesses, everyone has a pound of virtue, etc? It is even in synch with many of our basic cultural stereotypes—like the dumb jock, or the genius professor who can’t tie his tie, or the hyperintellectual male who is completely cut off from his feelings. We all take for granted skewed development, which is why, when we meet someone who seems to be good at everything, it’s always a bit awe-inspiring—or irritating.

Given that it is nothing new or particularly insightful, there must be something about this theory that has garnered it so much attention—even compelled integral theorists to catalogue several dozen distinct lines of development.

So, why is this seemingly obvious notion of Lines of Development such a compelling and integral part of Integral Theory?

I think what has given this theory so much traction is that it seems to make sense of one of the more troubling aspects of our experience in relation to the whole question of higher human development.

To illustrate, I want to take a poll: How many of us have felt the sting and confusion of learning that a great musician or artist whose music or art seems to convey something almost transcendent was abusive in their personal relationships or a desperate junkie?

And, more to the point of this talk, how many of us have been deeply confused, angry, or even disillusioned to discover that a great, seemingly enlightened spiritual Master we looked up to was either abusive, financially corrupt, or a sexual deviant who lied openly to cover up the fact that they were sleeping with a harem of attractive disciples behind their wife’s back (or while proclaiming to be celibate—take your pick)? (And by the way, that statement was not a dig at anybody specific—it’s a story that’s been told so many times, we could come up with dozens of examples).

You see, what I think has made the Lines of Development theory so compelling to us sophisticated spiritually seeking postmoderns is that it seems to answer a question that has plagued us at the core of our being, and threatened to undermine our faith in the possibility of genuine higher development. That question, as our beloved friend Ken Wilber likes to put it, is “why are spiritual teachers such assholes?”

Indeed, much of the spiritual metanarrative of the past forty years of Western spirituality reads like a tragic soap opera. We’ve watched as one after another of our most promising spiritual teachers publicly fell from grace, committing serious moral transgressions, collapsing into corruption and scandal. And this has been an extremely challenging reality for millions of contemporary spiritual seekers. Many have been wondering whether enlightenment is really all it’s cracked up to be. Or if authentic spiritual attainment is even possible. To compound the problem, many half-baked spiritual teachers have capitalized on this doubt, making light of their “human imperfections” as a demonstration of their humility and “spiritual maturity.” And in so doing, they have only continued to erode our sense of what is actually possible.

So, into this sea of confusion walks this notion of Lines of Development—a clean, simple, commonsense theory that seems to elegantly explain the whole problem. It tells us that the reason that these great Masters acted inappropriately was not due to any deficit in their spiritual attainment. They were still Great Masters. They were just undeveloped in some other Lines. For instance, if a Great spiritual master acts in ways that are abusive, we should see this not as a spiritual deficit but as a deficit in their moral line of development, or their interpersonal line of development, or perhaps in their emotional line of development. If a spiritual teacher can’t seem to keep their pants on, this is probably due to some lack of psychosexual development and is not necessarily indicative of any limitation in their spiritual attainment.

At first blush, this seems like the day has been saved, right? We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater after all. The possibility of Great Enlightenment still exists. We just have to understand that it is one line among many. We can still believe in and aspire toward higher spiritual development. We just have to realize that no matter how spiritually evolved we become, it’s not necessarily going to make us a better human being.

Now, I need to be honest. For all of its elegance and simplicity, this theory never quite worked for me. And not just because it lets all the gurus off the hook. Pardon my brief aside, but I mean, what a relief, right? We no longer have to strive to appear superhuman in order to meet our disciples’ expectations. And, more importantly, we don’t have to hold ourselves to a higher standard of conduct. Aaaahhh. If we get caught with our pants down or our hand in the cookie jar, we can simply acknowledge our lack of development in some of the non-spiritual lines—like morality—and we’re out of hot water! And you know what that means, guys: more of those fringe benefits!

But seriously, spiritual teachers aside, the deeper reason why this Lines of Development theory never worked for me in the spiritual domain is this: If all of our spiritual practice and striving isn’t going to make us a more conscious, sensitive, decent, caring, wise, respectful, and moral human being whose behavior in the world shines as a beacon of enlightened consciousness—then A) what good is it? And B) if our definition of spirituality doesn’t include any of those things, what exactly do we mean by spirituality at this point anyway? If we’re going to separate out all of these other lines, it seems that the only thing that’s really left is our ability to access altered states of consciousness. And, for me, that is a definition too small for the domain it attempts to define.

To explain why, I want to bring us all back to where I started my talk. To that spiritual luminary—dead or living—whom you revere and look to for inspiration. What is it about them that inspires your admiration and respect? Is it their ability to access higher states? Or is it something else? And if something else, what is that something else?

If I were to put a word on it, I might call it “enlightened humanity.” I think that if we step outside of all the talk about different developmental lines, we can acknowledge that there is something called our humanity which has to do with the depth of our interiors, our moral sense, our character, our values, our wisdom, our decency, our compassion, our willingness to risk for a greater good. And I think we all have a basic commonsense intuition that spirituality is about the enlightenment and transformation of our humanity on a fundamental level. What makes a truly spiritual person so extraordinary and unusual is that all of the best human qualities and virtues seem to naturally shine forth from that person, while all of the worst human qualities and vices seem to have subsided. And the more enlightened a person is, the more this should be the case. And I think that deep down we all know this, even if our theories have managed to confuse us on the surface.

You see, I think this notion of Lines of Development as applied to spirituality is a great example of an elegant theory talking us out of our common sense. I think the reason it has been so successful at doing so lies in a series of fundamental confusions in contemporary spirituality. And while there is not time here to discuss them all, there is one that’s important to address, as it’s one which some Integral Theorists have helped to propagate.

It is a confusion about what nonduality—and nondual realization—really means. The vast majority of contemporary “nondual” teachings and teachers—including some influential Integral theorists—have propagated the idea that nondual realization is when you discover that only the Absolute or Unmanifest is ultimately Real, and the entire manifest domain is either unreal, an illusion, a cosmic joke or divine play with no ultimate significance. We’ve all by now heard the notion that satori is the realization that everything leading up to satori—including any notion of evolution—is meaningless. And that, after enlightenment, we might still play in the world, but we wouldn’t take it seriously.

So, with this as our idea about where our path is taking us, it’s easy to understand how someone with a high or even ultimate level of spiritual development might not be very highly developed in their humanity. Because that version of enlightenment really has nothing to do with the “relative” world of time, space, and action. So, in this view of ultimate spiritual attainment, the notion that spirituality is a single line divorced from all of the others I’ve been speaking about makes perfect sense.

There’s only one problem. That is not what nonduality really means. That is not what enlightenment really is.

Remember, the ultimate statement of nonduality is that form and emptiness, nirvana and samsara are one. Which means it is all REAL.

This is why the authentic realization of enlightenment is simultaneously blissful and painful. Because one sees, in a way one has never seen before, that the unmanifest ground of everything is a limitless perfection, but that the manifest world is a bloody mess. And they’re both equally real.

And in the face of this beautiful and terrible reality, there is a further recognition—IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. So much of the mess of the human condition lies in a fundamental ignorance of the way things are. So much of the horror show of the world is an outgrowth of our collective, unevolved consciousness. And it can all change.

Which is why, when someone truly realizes this, they usually become a fanatic. They have only one choice left. To give their every breath to awakening and evolving the world.

Now, it’s possible to experience all kinds of higher states and insights and not get to this genuinely nondual realization. Which is why most spiritual teachers and teachings are as confusing as they are helpful. Because, frankly, it is very rare that someone touches, let alone surrenders to this ultimate realization. Most spiritual teachers truthfully haven’t gotten anywhere near it. So, generally we get a cocktail of dharma mixed in with a bunch of erroneous conclusions. Like enlightenment is simply about being here now, or loving what is, realizing there is nowhere to go, nothing to become, nothing that needs to change. And various other half-truths that are absolutely deadening to the spiritual impulse.

Now, to summarize where we are at this point, I’ve said that saying that spiritual development is a separate line that excludes moral, social, emotional, and psychological development is problematic because it reduces spirituality to the ability to access altered states. I’ve also said that this way of defining spirituality flies in the face of our basic commonsense intuition that spirituality is about the enlightenment and transformation of our humanity. And then I said that the reason so many of us have been so easily talked out of our common sense lies in a bundle of confusing ideas being taught in the contemporary spiritual scene, and specifically the notion that nondual realization means we see the world as unreal or at best a cosmic joke.

By my count, there are two more questions I need to answer to bring this home.

1) If spirituality is not just a single line of development, then what is it?

2) If this Lines of Development theory does not explain the moral and social transgressions of so many Great Gurus, then what does account for it?

In answer to the first of these, there are many ways to speak about what spiritual awakening is, but one very good way that I think will shed some light here is to see it as the discovery of the Dharma. When one truly wakes up, one begins to see with the Dharma eye, or the eye of wisdom. Now, the word dharma is thrown around a lot these days, but if we look back at its roots, we find three meanings that tend to be associated with it. Dharma as Truth. Dharma as Law. And Dharma as Path. Simply put, one sees the Truth, which reveals the Law which guides the Path. And, when things are working properly, this is a discovery that engages every aspect of one’s humanity. One sees, suddenly with unimaginable subtlety, the delicate web of interrelatedness that binds us together. One sees the significance of every move we make, and how it impacts the whole through a complex chain of causation. One awakens to the Law of karma, the law of right action which reveals an inherent ordering principle in the Kosmos, and a Kosmic command to align with that order. In the theistic traditions, this Law was referred to as the Will of God, as in, “Not my will, but Thy Will be done.” Finally, one discovers the Path, the actions one must take to stay aligned with the Law, revealing themselves anew through clear seeing in every moment. And, in the face of this knowledge, one experiences the awakening of what Andrew Cohen calls the “Spiritual Conscience,” or what the Sufis called, simply, “the Heart.” That faculty within the awakening psyche which compels us to act in accord with the Law, and which feels a kind of Kosmic pain when we violate it.

What is the impact on an individual who realizes this kind of depth? It’s earth-shattering. The result is a complete revolution at the very core of one’s being, which then radiates outward, bringing about an integral transformation of every aspect of one’s humanity.

On a values level, it brings about a radical reorientation in one’s priorities, worldview and values. We begin to care about the evolution of the whole, and the evolution of consciousness itself more than we care about anything personal. We become a Kosmoscentric or even Godcentric individual.

On a moral level, it brings one into profound alignment with the moral order of the Kosmos, compelling one to always sacrifice self-interest for the good of the whole.

On an interpersonal level, it leads to a profound attunement to the evolutionary needs of others, and an unbearable sensitivity to the impact our actions have on others. Freed from the confines of self-concern, we find ourselves able to see deeply into others souls and respond to them with a precision, warmth and kindness unimaginable within ordinary egoic relationship.

On a cognitive level, it liberates our mind from rigidity and opens us to ever higher levels of spiritual cognition in which authentic intuition and reason are clarified and united in a higher embrace.

On an emotional level, it awakens a depth of feeling that would have been too much for us to bear in our previous ego-identified state. We become choicelessly present to our own emotional life, and that emotional life expands to begin to literally feel for the evolving whole. When we see ourselves or someone else acting selfishly and out of alignment with the Law, it causes us emotional pain, and that pain deepens our evolutionary response to life.

In essence, what I’m asserting is that spiritual attainment is integral at the deepest level of the psyche. It integrates our whole being from the top-down. Enlightenment really is all it’s cracked up to be. It is just exceedingly rare.

Which leaves me with the final question: If authentic spiritual attainment really does make us a better person, why, then, have so many spiritual teachers been less than exemplary human beings?

If you’ve followed me so far, you can probably guess my answer: Most spiritual teachers today have not attained the depth of realization I’m speaking about here. They may have had profound experiences. They may even have attained a kind of ongoing yogic access to expanded states of consciousness. They may even be able to transmit those higher states to others. But that does not mean they have surrendered their will before the throne of the Ultimate. It does not make them truly God-realized human beings.

Why are we in this predicament? Why, after all these years of Western seeking and practice, don’t we have more to show for it?

That’s another big subject, and more than I can do justice to here. But in broad strokes, here is my take.

Truthfully, I think it’s quite simple. I think that pre-modern spiritual practices and traditions are not sufficient to address the complexity of the postmodern world or the postmodern psyche. Those of us postmoderns who are engaging in spiritual practice today are at a completely different developmental level than any of the great traditions knew anything about. We have a kind of complex, layered interiority and individuation that never existed before. Our complex interiors are deeply related to and engaged with the interiors of others in ways that the great sages of yore never could have imagined. The great wisdom traditions are indeed great. And their highest wisdom is universal and timeless. But they really don’t sufficiently address us.

In recent years, many have recognized the limitations of pre-modern spirituality, and have offered various hybrids of Western psychotherapy and traditional contemplative practice. But from my observation, this has mostly just contributed to making the context for spiritual practice smaller, by anchoring it to the healing, recovery, and fulfillment of the traumatized personal self. Out of this marriage, there have also been a variety of what we might call postmodern spiritual practices born, but again, they all seem to be focused on healing and fulfilling the self, and have little or nothing to do with anchoring us into a context infinitely greater than ourselves. Spirituality has always been about bringing us into alignment with and submission to an Absolute principle, in the face of which our personal wounds, fears, and desires are revealed to be irrelevant. In the absence of this ultimate context, we have to ask: are we really practicing spirituality at all?

What I think will usher in a new era of authentic spiritual enlightenment—and, in my opinion, the only thing that will do it—is the emergence of new post-postmodern spiritual forms that are fundamentally Godcentric and Kosmoscentric. These new spiritual Teachings will address the complex relational sensitivity and individuation of the postmodern psyche, but from an authentically enlightened Dharmic context. This means that they will be derived from the Dharma itself—from a clear seeing of the Way with a capital “w”, and from there an engagement with the complexities of the postmodern psyche. New transformative practices will be born that harness our newfound interiority in the dismantling of its own egoic structures. And the path will become increasingly collective, in the recognition that consciousness is relational, and that a profound engagement with the evolution of our collective interiors is needed to support authentic development of our individual interiors.

There are a few such Teachings already emerging. I was part of one such experiment for nearly a decade and a half and the results were extraordinary. And I’m going to be putting forward another approach to this adventure with the release of my books, and the launch of a new kind of spiritual center here in the Bay area next year. If you’re interested in staying tuned, you can sign up for my mailing list on the homepage of this site.

*(Adapted from a talk at the Collegiate Peaks Forum, Buena Vista, Colorado)

Tonight what I want to speak about is very near to my heart. It’s been the focus of much of my life over the past decade-and-a-half and is the subject of a book I’m now working on.

The issue I want to address has to do with where religion and spirituality are headed at the dawn of the Third Millennium. It is also about where humanity is headed, about the evolution of the very way we define what it is to be human, or more specifically, the ultimate meaning of human life.

Here at the beginning of the 21st century, we at the progressive edge of culture find ourselves in an interesting predicament. Never before in human history have we had so much complexity, uncertainty, and change to deal with.

Even a couple of generations ago, most of us knew our place in the world, what work we would do for our entire life, and had a kind of stability that we no longer have. Most of us will live in many different cities over the course of our lives and be recreating community and social relationships many times over. Half of us will get divorced and remarried. The nuclear family no longer provides a meaningful context for many of us. 50% of adults now live alone. Many of us only see our parents or children once a year. We are all dealing with unprecedented diversity in our workplaces, people with very different worldviews, beliefs, attitudes and preferences.

At the same time, the speed of technological change is requiring adaptability we’ve never known. Our paleolithic ancestors used same set of stone tools for 1.5 million years. And even 150 years ago, the technology was relatively static, with no significant changes to adapt to in a single lifetime, if anything changed at all. Unless you happened to be there for the invention of the plough or the printing press. But look at your own lifetime. How many new sets of tools have you had to adapt to? Look at the last five years. Most of us know that things are changing fast, but how many of us are aware that the rate of change itself is accelerating? This is a hard concept to get our minds around, but what techno-futurists call “The Singularity” is near. The honest truth is that we have no idea what the world will be like in ten or even five years. And before long, we’ll live in a world where we won’t know what it will be like next week. So, we are being stretched to develop a kind of flexibility and adaptability we’ve never known to be able to be resilient in the face of so much change.

We’re also confronted by global scale issues with global scale uncertainties attached to them. Overpopulation, modernization of the third world, terrorism, the potential for a worldwide epidemic, the rapid deterioration of the biosphere which sustains us. We’re being challenged by climate crisis (which is only the most visible iceberg tip of the environmental crisis) to consider some potentially radical lifestyle changes. We are being stretched to think and feel beyond ourselves, our families, and our communities. Humans have never had to think on a global scale before.

But the biggest challenge is that we’ve lost our collective compass. Religion used to tell us how to navigate life. But those of us who have close religious affinity are often left wanting because religions evolved in a different time, and are now challenged in their ability to adequately equip us to deal with the complexities of the lives we’re living. What prophet of the past, no matter how enlightened, could have told us how to relate to a global climate crisis?

To compound the issue, for most of us, the myths of the past no longer inspire us as reliable accounts of reality on which to base our lives. There has been a great shaking off of ancient dogmas that had two parts to it.

One was the Western Enlightenment, the scientific revolution. We realized we could understand reality directly, discern the Truth for ourselves without the mediation of the church. This marked what is known as “the Modern era” and this has allowed us to come out from under religious dogma. Freeing us from the idea of “private revelation” into one of “public revelation.”

Second was Postmodernism’s insight that even in our inquiry into truth, we are seeing through cultural lenses that may always be invisible to us. We are all biased, and even our science is operating under many presuppositions. This was the great death of Truth with a capital T, in the recognition that our capacity to Know is limited. We can never know everything.

Losing the dogmas of the past has been a good move. I’m glad that we now have the freedom to live our lives without kowtowing to a church hierarchy or needing to believe in a God defined as an old man with a white beard on a throne. In the absence of a unifying context, we’ve done a good job of finding ways to create our own personal meaning. But what many of us are discovering is that this freedom to think and feel and value as we please has come with a price. Because we have also lost, by and large, a larger unifying context for our lives. A unifying moral context. A unifying sense of meaning and purpose. A unifying myth.

This is why so many of us feel a sense of fragmentation and isolation. In a world where truth is relative, meaning and purpose are subjective, we are all ultimately alone in our own universe.

In the midst of this great shaking off of religion, I feel that we have also, by and large, lost the sacred—that which used to bring us to our knees.

So, in looking at the Future of God, the questions I’m trying to answer are: how can we resurrect this sense of the sacred within a scientifically enlightened, post-mythic, postmodern world? How can we discover a unifying context of meaning and purpose? How can we find higher guidance for how to live our lives within the realm of public revelation?

Just because we no longer have a shared belief in a revealed “good book” to give a sense of meaning and purpose to our lives, do we have to leave the sacred behind? In our enlightened, scientific age, can we find a new myth that imbues life with a sense of higher meaning, of a meaning beyond ourselves, even beyond humanity itself? Or, more to the point, is there a story we can locate within a scientific worldview that is captivating enough, compelling enough, spiritual enough to magnetize us toward the highest human possibilities?

You see, although it may be true that we cannot ultimately know everything, and we cannot be entirely certain that our filters aren’t distorting our perception of what’s “out there,” we have learned a lot in these last few hundred years of scientific inquiry that we can pretty much agree on. And, it is my opinion that, if we look at it closely, a profound pattern is starting to emerge that contains all the elements we need to begin to find a new, universal and even sacred context of meaning and purpose for human life. And that can also teach us a lot about how to live in the face of the chaos and uncertainty of modern life. That pattern, in a word, is evolution.

You see, when we step back from all of the sciences and social sciences, we see a similar picture: progressive development over time. So, my talk tonight is going to explore: what does this emerging knowledge of evolution tell us about the meaning and purpose of human life? And what does it tell us about how we should be living?

Indeed, if we take what’s known as a “Deep Time” perspective, and look at what has been unfolding for the last 13.7 billion years since the big bang, it starts to look like a great epic story of evolution that trumps any of the great epic creation stories the religions have given us. And what makes it all the more significant is that this story is not just one that was delivered to us by a prophet or the dream of a village elder. It’s based on what we’ve collectively been able to discern about reality through science.

So, what is this epic story? This new myth? I like the way cosmologist Brian Swimme sums it up: Take a great cloud of hydrogen gas and leave it alone, and it becomes rosebushes, giraffes, and humans.

A Tale of Nested Creativity

To go into a little more detail, to the best of our knowledge, 13.7 billion years ago, we were a singularity. Then out of nothing, the universe exploded into being. Out of an apparent nothing emerged a miraculous something. It only took about a million years for that initial firestorm to calm down, but from there, it began a stunning display of tireless creativity that has continued to unfold its miracle to this day. An amorphous cloud of hydrogen gas gradually coalesced into a hundred billion galaxies, which became perhaps the first artisans producing balls of hydrogen gas that began to burn with great intensity.

Now, looking at it at the time, it probably all seemed rather meaningless, given that there was no one around to observe it anyway. But something very important was happening. Inside those primal stars, as they went supernova, the heat grew so intense that higher elements were born, like carbon and oxygen, and in these explosions which were as brilliant as the combined light of a billion stars, they scattered those elements across the galaxy. And out of those higher elements came the building blocks of a planet called Earth, which, in the blink of an eye begins to generate life. 4.6 billion years of Earth. 4 billion years of life.

Now, I want to point out that it didn’t have to be this way. The conditions for life were by no means inevitable. As it turns out, the universe appears to be set up in just such a way that life could exist. In his book Just Six Numbers, British Royal Astronomer Sir Martin Reese explains that if any one of six basic constants or laws that define our universe were only slightly different, life would not be possible.

For example:

a) If the nuclear strong force were only slightly stronger (by as little as 1%) hydrogen would be rare in the universe, and elements heavier than iron would also be rare. If it were slightly weaker, hydrogen would be the only element in the universe.

b) If the nuclear weak force were only slightly larger, neutrons would decay more readily and be less available and no helium would have been produced by the Big Bang. If the nuclear weak force were only slightly smaller, the Big Bang would have burned most or all of the hydrogen into helium, for a subsequent overabundance of heavy elements made by stars, and life as we know it would not be possible.

c) If the nucleon to nucleon interaction were even .4% different, there would not be enough carbon in the universe for life as we know it to exist.

So, here you have this universe finely tuned for life, and then what happens? In what we might call the second big bang, the big bang of life, this dazzling display of creativity known as cosmic evolution morphs into an even more brilliant display of creativity in the form of biological evolution. From bacteria to plants to animals, this explosion of biological diversity gives rise to some 50 million different species.

Now, when we look at life, it also didn’t have to be this way. It’s feasible that we could have just accidentally gotten life and it would have remained at the bacterial level for eternity. But it didn’t. It has been a creative flowering of immense beauty and diversity. Now, one reason evolutionary theory has been knocked by religionists is that it seems to imply that it all unfolded randomly and meaninglessly. The late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould was famous for his assertions that evolution was a random event, which he would illustrate by saying that if we were to rewind the tape back to the beginning and start over, the story would unfold very differently than it did this time.

Yes and No. Sure, we wouldn’t have the same exact species, but if we look at what’s known in evolutionary biology as Convergence, it turns out that where biological evolution is concerned, some very particular developments were in the cards from the beginning. For instance, wings to fly evolved independently in flies, birds, pterosaurs and bats. The hydrostatic penis, which inflates through an infusion of fluid, evolved independently in mammals and turtles. Image-sensing eyes evolved independently 60 different times. And there are hundreds of other examples of traits that evolved independently. Given the fact that it followed certain progressions, we can be sure that we would have something very much like what we have now. So we can see that the laws of Life were set up such that the creativity of the Universe would evolve eyes to see itself one way or another.

So, this creative unfolding of life is trucking along for about 4 billion years. Then, about 4 million years ago, one of these creatures descended from trees, and stood up on two feet.

Now, initially, things didn’t speed up all that much. Our hands made tool use possible. But there was no flourishing of innovation. hominids made a number of the same stone tools over and over for a million and a half years. And the striking thing is that they just kept making it, without innovation.

And about 50,000 years ago, something dramatic occurs. The mind goes through a dramatic mutation. Some evolutionary scientists call it “The Mind’s Big Bang.” This is the moment when we start seeing dramatic artwork on the cave walls, ornate beads appear, people begin placing flowers on the dead. Human creativity is born, and with it the capacity to reflect on ourselves and our place in the Cosmos.

This is the birth of culture and with the advent of the human, the evolutionary dynamics that have been unfolding since time began suddenly begin to express themselves through the evolution of culture. From hunter-gatherer to agrarian to industrial to the information age, from the cave paintings to the pyramids to Shakespeare to rap music (Okay, maybe I should have left that one off the list). From family to clan to tribe to city to state to nation to global village (still working on that last one). From papyrus to the printing press to the telephone to the internet. From the hand axe to the plough to the crane. From the horse and buggy to the automobile to the space shuttle.

So, evolution has been on this upward spiral, first on a cosmological level, then on a biological level, then on a cultural level. And, if you step back and look at the broad sweeps, it is clear that it is heading in a very specific direction. Evolution moves in the direction of greater and greater cooperation and greater and greater complexity. Cooperating groups of self-replicating molecular processes formed the first cells. Cooperating groups of individual cells formed larger and more complex cells. Groups of these cells combined to create the first multi-celled organisms. Groups of multi-celled organisms, like us, combined to form clans, then tribes and eventually societies. And those societies have continued to reach toward ever-widening circles of cooperation. Ultimately to the global village. We are on an arc toward Unity and complexity.

So, with the emergence of the human, something new is afoot under the sun. Not only does evolution move into the realm of culture, but with the advent of human consciousness, the universe has begun waking up to its own creative power. For the first time since that primordial fireball burst forth its light, the living universe has developed the eyes to look back in awe on its own unfolding. The miraculous evolutionary dynamics that created and continue to create the universe have now become conscious. And you know what their name is? YOU. We are the conscious, reflective organ of the universe. And what’s more, we have now managed to look back to our beginnings and begin to understand the creative evolutionary dynamics that have been playing themselves out all along. And we’ve also even seen where they’re going. So, not only are we conscious, we know we’re conscious. Not only are we evolving; we know we’re evolving. And not only are we headed in a particular direction; we know which direction we’re headed.

So, from almost nothing came something, and the laws of that something were such that it would trend eternally in the direction of cooperation and unity. So, we are the conscious reflective organ of a living universe that is on a path toward greater cooperation and unity.

Beyond the Flat Earth

Most of us have gotten on board with the idea of evolution by now. But, as with any new worldview, there are many holdovers from the old paradigm that remain intact. For instance, one holdover from flat-earth cosmology is the notion that when we look toward the night sky, we are looking up into the universe. We sort of imagine ourselves on a flat plane looking upward into the sky. Whereas it’s equally true that we could be looking down or out. Yet do you see how hard it is to imagine that right now we are on the bottom of the world looking down, pasted on by gravity?

Now, this holdover from the flat earth days doesn’t have any import. The fact that we still haven’t adjusted to the new paradigm in this way isn’t impacting how we live our lives. But, in the case of evolution, there is one holdover within all of us that is profoundly influencing the way we conceive of ourselves and how we relate to and live our lives. For although evolution as an idea is something we accept, we still tend to think of ourselves as static entities. You see, all creation myths the world over shared one thing in common. They imagine that the human was created fully formed. That we just showed up. Therefore, deep in our psyche is the conviction that a human being is a fixed thing. That human beings have always been and will always be the same. When we think back a few thousand years to ancient Egypt we imagine they were people like us just in a more primitive context.

But this is not the case. Within a deep time context, we know that human beings grew out of other animals and emerged gradually over a series of small and large changes over millions of years. And that, even in the brief period that modern humans have been around, our experience of being alive has been developing and unfolding gradually as the dynamics of evolution moved into the realm of consciousness and culture. Even a few hundred years ago, the experience of being human was radically different. Developmental psychologists tell us that the sense of interiority, of self-awareness and introspection, and particularly the sense of being autonomous, self-authoring individuals able to choose and create our lives is an extremely new development. A person in the middle ages did not have a sense of self like we do.

The implications of this, if you really let them in, are profound. You see, what it means for us is that we are not static entities but transitional beings. The human is not a fixed thing but an unfolding process. We are on our way somewhere. We are not there yet. If you draw a line, an arrow of human evolution, let’s say a 100,000 year line starting with the emergence of the modern human roughly 50,000 years ago, where are we on that line? Right in the middle. Make it a 500,000 year line starting in the same place, and where are we? Just getting started. Make it a million year line . . .

To put this in a deep time perspective, if the history of the universe were being measured on a 24-hour clock, the human brain would have been around for about one minute.

Now, imagine humanity as a single human being in a process of development from infancy to old age. Looking at our overall behavior, where would you say we are on that developmental spectrum? We’ll go in reverse. How many would say “senior citizen”? How many would say “mature adult”? How many would say “adolescent”? How many would say “child”? Toddler? Infant? This is a question Duane Elgin has been asking his audiences for years and the typical answer is “adolescence.” What’s most interesting about the exercise is that when we put our attention there, we all know this about ourselves.

But have we really integrated this knowledge? Do we really live our lives in the knowledge that we are this adolescent species that is just getting started, and that we have a big job to do, which is to grow up?! Not usually. And why? Because from the beginning of time, we lived in a creationist worldview, and therefore are deeply conditioned to see ourselves as static.

So far, although I’ve said a lot, I’ve basically made two points. First is that we are the eyes of the universe, the reflective organ of the evolving whole. Second is that we are beings in transition, and are really just getting started at figuring out what we’re supposed to be doing here.

So, my question is: how would we live if we took these two truths to heart?

Now, before we look at some possible answers to this question, I want to point out that in terms of our current stage of evolution, it’s important to recognize that we are the first generation in history to have the luxury to ask them. Not only are we the first to really understand our place in the cosmos. But we’re the first to have the luxury to not be concerned with survival, and to actually have the freedom on a mass scale to think about higher things and consider what our larger role really is. We are at a unique moment in history.

So, how would we live if we knew that we were transitional beings and that evolution was now in our hands?

Let’s look at what options are available to us.

1) We could accumulate more stuff. This is what a lot of us have done, right? And, if we are the conscious organ of a living universe, it should come as no surprise that accumulating more dead things to surround ourselves with doesn’t ultimately satisfy.

2) We could accumulate more experiences. Travel the world, climb mountains, sail the seas, try new things. This is perhaps a bit more interesting, but those of us who have done a lot of that also know that it doesn’t really ultimately satisfy our deepest longing. There’s something too passive about it. And also a bit too self-focused. Just taking it all in.

3) We could express our creativity. Take up painting, write the great American novel. This feels a bit warmer, right? At least it’s more generative, we’re participating in the creative unfolding. Which is why it is a more deeply satisfying experience than mere accumulation. But if the context of that creativity is mere self-expression for self-expression’s sake, again, it tends to fall short of the mark.

4) We could pour our energy into service, either helping those in need, or trying to save the environment. Now, if our goal is to become planetary citizens, this one clearly feels warmest of all. But, again, I would bring us to the question of context. What is the context in which we’re serving? Are we simply patching up holes in a sinking ship or are we building the Ark that will carry humanity forward on its evolutionary journey?

You see, what I think we need to be doing is using our powers of consciousness and creativity to help move evolution forward, consciously participating in the great work of furthering what Andrew Cohen calls “The Universe Project.” In a very real sense, humans are the growing edge of the big bang, of evolution as far as we know. And now, with our unique power of choice, we can consciously evolve. So, we need to do it—and fast.

So, what do I mean by conscious evolution? Is it still going to be biological evolution? Are we going to consciously grow a second set of arms to make us more productive? Or x-ray vision? Not any time soon. Biological evolution takes eons. No, with the human, evolution has now moved into the realm of culture and consciousness. And so, when I talk about moving evolution forward, that’s what I’m referring to. Evolving our own consciousness. Our interiors. And evolving culture.

Now, what do I mean by evolve our consciousness?

This is a huge topic, which I go into in tremendous depth in my classes and workshops. But, for the purposes of my talk tonight, I will give a brief introduction to what I’m calling Evolutionary Spirituality.

You see, apart from all of the social functions it has served, at the heart of religion has always been the mystical quest. Defined in many ways, at its essence is a belief that humans, as the conscious, aware part of the creation, have a potential for holiness, an immense transformative potential to become something extraordinary. And at the same time, we have an innate lower nature, call it original sin in Christianity or the five poisons in the East. And the goal of the spiritual path is to transcend our smallness, our lower nature, and become a pure reflection of the perfection of the Creator or the source of all that is.

And in light of our new understanding of evolution, I would like to modify that perspective a little. I would say that the traditions are correct that we do have an extraordinary, even cosmic potential that we are evolving toward. And we also have a “lower nature.” But that it probably wasn’t Adam and Eve’s fault. In an evolutionary context, we’ve come to understand that these are our inherited proclivities left over from our evolutionary past. Human beings evolved over long tracts of time when life was unimaginably different than it is today. Like it or not, we are saddled with programming that evolved over millions of years. We have a reptilian brain, a mammalian brain and a primate brain all hardwired with instincts that no longer serve us. Indeed, as a scan of any day’s news reveals, much of it is incredibly destructive to ourselves and others if allowed to express itself unabated. So, we have a lot of evolutionary baggage we need to overcome or transcend.

But the most important piece in terms of what it means to consciously evolve is that (1) we inherited a tendency toward short-term self-interest. And (2) we inherited an intense resistance to change. A fear of the new and unknown. Because from a perspective of survival, change meant risk of death. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to care about someone else when your own needs aren’t being met, or are being threatened? Have you ever noticed how hard it is to change?

And if we agree that the purpose of Life is to get on board with the evolution project, can you see how both of these tendencies are major obstacles in front of us?

If we’re going to be fit to be conscious agents of evolution, we need to:

1) transcend our resistance to change, our fear of the unknown, our rigidity of mind by becoming fluid, adaptable, flexible

2) transcend egocentrism and ethnocentrism, tribalism and nationalism to become true planetary citizens.

And, so, just as in the old religions, the highest calling was for a radical self-transcendence and purification so that we could know God directly, I think that in the new evolutionary spirituality, we also have a great mystical task before us as human beings. Which is threefold:

(1) to face the reality of how primitive our current evolutionary stage is compared to where we can go. To face this both for the race as a whole and also to see it honestly in ourselves in all of its particulars.

(2) to give our hearts and souls to the deep spiritual work of rising above our lower nature.

(3) to stretch to think and feel, and most importantly act as global citizens. In all that we do to stretch beyond self-interest, tribal interest, regional interest, and national interest, to realize that evolution is seeking unification, and it is our job as conscious agents of evolution to help to bring that into being.

So, how are we going to go against the momentum of evolution up to this point? How are we going to overthrow the tyranny of eons of conditioning and embrace change, and expand our sphere of identity to embrace the whole?

Is it a matter of pure effort and will, onerously working against our own proclivities driven by a sense of mission and vision? I won’t say this isn’t part of it.

But fortunately, evolution gave us a shortcut. When confronted with the unknown, with chaos, with change, although we have a lot of resistance, there is a part of us that gets excited. Despite our resistance to change, we nonetheless long for it. Statistics show that what keeps employees working at a company is not better salary, not more benefits, but a growth-oriented environment where people feel like they’re being provided an opportunity to continuously evolve. You see, I think it’s no accident that we feel most alive when we’re growing and evolving, when we’re confronted with challenges that require us to develop new capacities, to stretch beyond the known into the undiscovered land of our emerging self, of who we are becoming. That is when we are most in touch with that evolutionary impulse at the heart of creation.

It is my conviction that at the heart of every human being is a spark of that initial impulse that has been driving the whole event. And, if we can align ourselves with it, ground ourselves in it, it will give us all the inspiration, strength and perspective we need to do its bidding. Remember where we came from. You see, we are, after all, the eyes and hearts of the Big Bang. We were there before it all began. And the creative evolutionary dynamics that have given birth to this entire universe in all its glory and diversity are now alive in us. And, in a very real sense, they are only now attaining the peak of their power. Because, in us, these powers now have attained consciousness. They can be directed.

You see, although this universe has been going for 14 billion years, the action is really just getting started. So far, we’ve had three big bangs. The cosmic big bang that brought it all into existence in the first place. The big bang of life. And the mind’s big bang that brought forth the miracle of human consciousness. And it’s my conviction that if enough of us take the leap I’m speaking about, before long, we will find ourselves in the midst of a third big bang. The big bang of the human spirit.

As we free ourselves from the shackles of our animal nature, from short-term thinking, from self-interest, from rigidity and narrowness and fear, and step up to our true creative roles as conscious, enlightened co-creators of the Future, we will witness a creative flourishing that will make the first three big bangs seem puny by comparison—then the Word will have truly become flesh, not just in one. But in the many. On a personal level, this will be our salvation, our liberation. On a collective level, I think we will have not only come into maturity as a species, we will have found our place in the universe. And the Earth and the Heavens will rejoice in the Glory of what we can express.

For those of you who don’t know me and what I’m up to, my focus is on the articulation of a 21st century mysticism which leaves behind the dogmas of our mythic past but remains true to the mystical core of all traditions, which is about the transcendence of our separate sense of self and the awakening to our essential unity with all that is. In my speaking and writing, my focus is on how we can wake up out of the trance of separation and individuality into an embodied awareness of and care for the evolution of the larger whole we are a part of. Now, from an authentic mystical perspective, it’s hard to get much traction with the notion of gratitude because it tends to bring our attention onto ourselves—what we’ve received, how fortunate we are; and on the separate others who have given to us—and in that, it can serve as an impediment to this larger mystical realization of unity.

But, in contemporary spiritual circles, gratitude gets a lot of play these days, so I’ve been reflecting on how we might look at gratitude in a large enough context that it could empower our embrace of wholeness and our letting go of our focus on individuality. And it occurred to me that if we blow this whole notion of gratitude up in a big enough way, it soon leads us to a place where our petty concerns, desires, and fears are almost completely insignificant, leaving us available to participate in the evolution of the whole in a way we never could have imagined. So, this expansion of gratitude is what I’m going to talk about tonight.

For the first step in this expansion, I’d like to invite us all to forget about ourselves personally for the moment. Forget about our personal good fortune or our personal misfortune, about the ups and downs we’ve seen in our own individual lives, and instead bring our attention to the collective we are a part of—and specifically the collective known as 21st century middle-to-upper class Americans (and I would include the rest of the First World nations in that category as well).

Now, despite whatever ills still exist in our world (and there are many), I think it is undeniable that we are the most fortunate people to have ever lived. On a material level, we enjoy a level of luxury that surpasses that of most royalty throughout history. We have gadgets, goods and services to meet our every need and even needs we didn’t know we had. Medical advances now make it possible for most of us to live to be 80 in relatively good health. And with the information revolution, we now have all the knowledge of the world at our fingertips—including all the spiritual wisdom of the great traditions. But more than that, we are the first generation in the history of the universe to have the luxury of substantial free time. We have the free time to enrich our lives, to heal our childhood wounds in therapy, to cultivate our health and fitness, to express our creativity, and even to grow spiritually.

Now, think about where we’ve come from. Look back across the eons of “deep time.” The grand sweep of evolution has been this immense journey from that moment before the big bang, when some kind of infinite intelligence crammed into an infinitesimally small point decided to become everything, exploding into a chaotic firestorm that lasted for a million years. Then it starts to coalesce into primordial stars which go through their own big bangs each giving birth to the higher elements, including carbon and oxygen, which then become the building blocks of planets like ours capable of giving birth to life. Reflect on the fact that our universe appears to be not just capable of sustaining life, but in fact finely tuned for the appearance of life. That if any of the six basic mathematical constants that make up the universe were different by a fraction of a degree, life would not have been possible.

Now, look back on the 6 billion years of biological evolution. From the first self-replicating molecular processes who joined together to form the first simple cells who then joined forces to create the first complex cells, who then joined forces to create multicelled organisms which then struggled against all odds to adapt to their environments and in that gradually grew more and more complex until one day, about fifty thousand years ago, humans emerged. And now think about those 50,000 years of human evolution—about 2500 generations of us so far. Each individual basically just getting on with the business of survival, of improving their lot so that their children could have a better life. Think about the gradual development of culture and society, from hunter-gatherer to agrarian to industrial to the information age. Each person plugging away at the process, gradually rising up out of the animals we came from creating a richer world. And now think about the billions of people still alive who are basically still just concerned with survival, who don’t have the luxury we have. And without whose ongoing cheap labor we would not be able to sustain the lifestyles we live today.

What would it mean to have gratitude for this entire process? What would happen to us if we honestly stepped into a sense of gratitude for all that has gone into creating the abundant, luxurious lives we now live? Who would we be if we no longer felt entitled to the good fortune we have but were on our knees in gratitude for everything we’ve been given by everyone and everything that led up to this moment? How would we spend our precious free time?

Would we accumulate more stuff? Would we accumulate more experiences? Would we try to find a way to give back?

The Earth is at a precarious moment in its evolution. It has given birth to a species that has attained the powers of Gods. The power to create and the power to destroy. This brand new species (realize we’ve only been around 50,000 years after 6 billion years of life evolution leading up to us) has discovered remarkable capacities, including the capacity for spiritual enlightenment and moral upliftment. But we are still largely running on animal programming, biological drives. And unless those of us with the luxury to reflect on this whole situation take it in our hands to evolve ourselves to a place where we are no longer driven by our ancient animal programs, but by our higher, newly emerging moral and spiritual capacities, it is very likely that the animal that discovered fire will unconsciously use its power to burn the whole thing down.

If, however, enough of us have the heart, the courage, the gratitude to see the situation clearly and take it upon ourselves to transform our own consciousness and the culture around us, we can be the bridge into a new order of human relationship and creative flourishing that will make our ancestors (from the primordial stars to the 2500 generations of humans) rest easy in the knowledge that we have done well with what we’ve been given.

So, as we come together on this day of giving thanks, it is my hope that we can all take a moment to reflect on our good fortune, and to renew or deepen our commitment to our own transformation and the transformation of our world. Realizing that the best way we can give thanks for the bounty we’ve received is to give back to the life process by giving everything to raising ourselves and humanity up to the next level.