The Eight Soulcentric/ Ecocentric Stages of Human Development - Bill Plotkin

Discernment

“Believe nothing on the faith of traditions, even though they have been held in honor for many generations and in diverse places.

Do not believe a thing because many people speak of it.

Do not believe on the faith of the sages of the past.

Do not believe what you yourself have imagined, persuading yourself that a God inspires you.

Believe nothing on the sole authority of your masters and priests.

After examination, believe what you yourself have tested and found to be reasonable, and conform your conduct thereto.”

                                    The Buddha

"We must go far beyond any transformation of contemporary culture. We must go back to the genetic imperative from which human cultures emerge originally and from which they can never be separated without losing their integrity and their survival capacity. None of our existing cultures can deal with this situation out of its own resources. We must invent, or reinvent, a sustainable human culture by a descent into our pre-rational, our instinctive resources. Our cultural resources have lost their integrity. They cannot be trusted. What is needed is not transcendence but “inscendence,” not the brain but the gene."

—Thomas Berry, the Dream of the Earth

The "Great Work" of Our Time

                       
                               

Drew Dellinger (PhD candidate) is an internationally sought-after speaker, poet, writer, activist and teacher who has inspired minds and hearts around the world, performing poetry and keynoting on justice, ecology, cosmology, and compassion. He is also a consultant, publisher, and founder of Planetize the Movement.

This is real. This is happening now.

                                                       

Matter (Form)

"Matter is a word, a noise, which refers to the forms and patterns taken by a process. We do not know what this process is, because it is not a “what” - that is, a thing definable by some fixed concept or measure. If we want to keep the old language, still using such terms as “spiritual” and “material,” the spiritual must mean “the indefinable,” that which, because it is living, must ever escape the framework of any fixed form. Matter is Spirit named."

       Alan Watts, Excerpted from Wisdom of Insecurity

The Main Premises of Mysticism

While the opinions of the most prominent mystic schools (Vedanta, Sufism, Taoism, Greek, Christian, Kabbalah etc) vary greatly, there are as Bertrand Russell so aptly summarized in his critical piece “Mysticism and Logic”, three main theories in which they do agree;

“(1) that all division and separateness is unreal, and that the universe is a single indivisible unity; 

(2) that evil is illusory, and that the illusion arises through falsely regarding a part as self-subsistent; 

(3) that time is unreal, and that reality is eternal, not in the sense of being everlasting, but in the sense of being wholly outside time. 

I do not pretend that this is a complete account of the matters on which all mystics concur, but the three propositions that I have mentioned may serve as representatives of the whole...” 

Science Vs Religion - are we missing the mark?

What are both the fields of Science and Theology primarily concerned with? Do they really need to consider each other as mortal enemies in order to reach their goals? and where have their paths deviated to? In order to begin to answer these questions I refer to an excerpt from Bertrand Russell's essay "Mysticism - Religion and Science" (Oxford University Press, 1961).

"...Dean Inge is more explicit: "The proof of religion, then, is experimental." [He has been speaking of the testimony of the mystics.] "It is a progressive knowledge of God under the three attributes by which He has revealed Himself to mankind - what are sometimes called the absolute or eternal values - Goodness or Love, Truth, and Beauty. If that is all, you will say, there is no reason why religion should come into conflict with natural science at all. One deals with facts, the other with values. Granting that both are real, they are on different planes. This is not quite true. We have seen science poaching upon ethics, poetry, and what not. Religion cannot help poaching either." That is to say, religion must make assertions about what is, and not only about what ought to be. This opinion, avowed by Dean Inge, is implicit in the words of Sir J. Arthur Thomson and Dr. Malinowski;

Sir J. Arthur Thomson - "Science as science never asks the question Why? That is to say, it never inquires into the meaning, or significance, or purpose of this manifold Being, Becoming, and Having Been." And he continues; "Thus science does not pretend to be a bedrock of truth." "Science," he tells us, "cannot apply its methods to the mystical and spiritual." 

Professor J. S. Haldane - "it is only within ourselves, in our active ideals of truth, right, charity, and beauty, and consequent fellowship with others, that we find the revelation of God." 

Dr. Malinowski - "religious revelation is an experience which, as a matter of principle, lies beyond the domain of science." 

Through Russell's extract we see his view that science is predominantly concerned with the the question of "What", obsessed with explaining the facts, deducting, rationalising and platonifying our everyday existence. While Religion appears concerned with the "Why" of 'Divine' values and ethics. Ironically in attempting to tell us where we have come from and where we are going, modern Religion seems to have lost its grounding in day to day reality. Similarly science's preoccupation with the facts of existence has neglected many of the simple underlying joys of life itself. I agree with Russell's stance and believe that Conventional Religion needs to return to its roots and should be concerned with the unitive vision of the Personal Soul with the (seemingly) Transpersonal Spirit in the moment to moment experience of life. In essence moving beyond these theories of judgement into the realm of concrete reality, into a place of paradox where we honour both contradictory notions, then and only then is there the possibility of living in truthful awareness.

The Way and It's Power - The Tao Te Ching

"Existence is beyond the power of words to define;

Terms may be used

But are none of them absolute.

At the beginning of creation there were no words,

Words came out of the womb of matter;

And whether (one) dispassionately

Sees to the core of life

Or passionately

Sees the surface,

The core and the surface

Are essentially the same,

Words making them seem different

Only to express appearance.

If name be needed, 

Wonder names them both:

From wonder into wonder

Existence reveals itself."

                                Lao Tzu




*Photo by Greg Latham