Integral spirituality, modern science, and conscious evolution

Thomas Maxwell, maxwell@cbl.umces.edu

University of Maryland Institute for Ecological Economics

Introduction: A Crisis of Perception

There is a growing understanding that addressing the global crisis facing humanity will require new methods for knowing, understanding, and valuing the world. Narrow, disciplinary, mechanistic, and reductionist perceptions of reality are proving inadequate for addressing the complex, interconnected problems of the current age. This divisive, compartmentalized thinking fosters alienation and self-focused behavior.

Healing the fragmentation, extreme relativism, and nihilism that plague modern culture will require "the integration of opposites, including a synthesis embracing both rational understanding and the mystical experience of unity".¹ It will require an integrated epistemology that embraces both the rational knowledge of scientific empiricism and the inner knowledge of spiritual experience. Out of this integrated epistemology emerges an integral, "ecological" worldview, which views all phenomena as self-expressions of the eternal, beatific One- the source of all existence. In this context the evolutionary emergence of the forms and entities of the cosmos can be viewed as the creative manifestation of the Divine Existence. This awakened vision promotes the healing of our long-standing alienation from the natural world and offers hope for renewal in the midst of widespread cultural deterioration.

Integral Spirituality

Ian Barbour, in describing the parallels between the structure of religion and the structure of science, has asserted that both science and religion are grounded in "data" and that both make propositions that can be assessed based on their agreement with the data. "The data for a religious community consist of the distinctive experiences of individuals".² Barbour labels the most common forms of spiritual experience as "numenous experience of the holy" and the "mystical experience of unity". Interpretations of these experiences become codified into religious doctrine.³ The observation that mysticism is substantially the same in different cultures and religions supports the view that a single, universal numinous experience underlies all the major world religions.⁴ Hick emphasizes the necessity of a plurality of expressions of this experience by asserting that the divine reality can be encountered, conceptualized, and responded to in many ways. "These different human awarenesses of the Eternal One represent different culturally conditioned perceptions of the same infinite divine reality".⁵

There is evidence that the universality of this numenous experience is reflected in a number of transcultural core principles that could support an integral spiritual vision.⁶ One candidate for this "perennial wisdom tradition" has been defined as the integral core of the great nondual philosophies which emerged through the teachings of Plato/Plotinus in the West and Nagarjuna in the East.⁷ This core philosophy, which "has, in one form or another, been the dominant official philosophy of the large part of civilized mankind through most of its history",⁸ can be expressed as a dynamic balance between two complementary expressions of Spirit: the "descent" of the One into the world of the many (manifestation/immanence), and the "ascent" from the many to the One (remembrance/transcendence).

Conscious Evolution

In the descent or involution of Spirit into mind, life, and matter, "a timeless and incorporeal One became the ground as well as the dynamic source of the existence of a temporal and material and extremely multiple and variegated universe".⁹ The involution of the Divine Existence in the apparent inconscience of matter actually creates the world of form, blesses it, and confers Goodness on all of it. Plato calls the entire manifest world "a visible, sensible God".¹⁰ In the words of the Koran (2,115) "Wheresoever you turn, there is the face of God".

The complementary ascent is a progressive self-manifestation of Spirit in the forms and entities of the material universe. The Divine Existence strives toward self-realization through progressively refined forms of material substance. Evolution proceeds through a progressive awakening of the involved Spiritual Essence in its ascent through the "great chain of being" from matter to life to mind to soul to spirit. Each new evolutionary emergent principle represents a balance between the creative self-expression of the Spiritual Reality and the constraints imposed by its manifestation in and envelopment by a nescient material substance. Each progressively higher level of the "great chain" represents a greater potential -a more complete accommodation- for the awakening and expression of the implicate Spiritual Consciousness. This striving for Self-realization is the final cause, "pull of the future", for the cosmic unfolding. The transcendent One (Plato's "Good") is "the universal object of desire, that which draws all souls toward itself".¹¹

The Hindu mystic/philosopher Sri Aurobindo gives eloquent expression to this contemplative vision of self-manifestation of Spirit in a material universe: "Matter reveals itself to the realizing thought and to the subtilised senses as the figure and body of Spirit, Spirit in its self-formative extension. Spirit reveals itself through the same consenting agents as the soul, the truth, the essence of Matter. Both admit and confess each as divine, real, and essentially one. Mind and life are disclosed in that illumination as at once figures and instruments of the Supreme Conscious Being by which It extends and houses Itself in material form and in that form unveils Itself to Its multiple centers of consciousness. Mind attains its self-fulfillment when it becomes a pure mirror of the Truth of Being which expresses itself in the symbols of the universe; Life, when it consciously lends its energies to the perfect self-figuration of the Divine in ever-new forms and activities of the universal existence".¹²

Spiritual awakening is conscious participation in the Divine unfolding: "the Universe is discovering and recreating itself as it evolves through the course of our human lives. Thus our conscious participation in creating the future could be seen as an extension of the self-organizing activity of the universe".¹³ Bede Griffiths interprets the words of St Paul, "the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God", as a summons to a "New Creation": a further stage in evolution, when humanity has transcended our present limited mode of existence and begins to "partake in the divine nature".¹⁴

Conclusion

This vision transcends the illusion of separateness to discern the unity, the "unbroken wholeness" which underlies the diverse forms of the universe. Our perception of connectedness, of our integral place in the web of life, emerges as an attribute of our connection with the eternal, beatific source of all existence. This awakened "ecological vision" widens our "circle of understanding and compassion, to embrace all living creatures in the whole of nature".¹⁵ It promotes the healing of our long-standing alienation from the natural world and offers hope for renewal in the midst of widespread cultural deterioration. A renewed understanding of the purpose and meaningfulness of life emerges from the wonder evoked by an awareness of the profound splendor of the progressive Divine revelation in the cosmic unfolding.