David Spangler Addresses the Question of an *It* Called *Evil*
David Spangler has written the following response to the thread, “There is an *IT*! Should It be called *EVIL*.” After the piece, I emphasize a few lines here that I believe are especially valuable.
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How I Agree with Andy about Evil
by David Spangler
Personal Communication, February 7, 2010
I appreciated Andy’s remarks about evil and what to call “It.” I’ve faced a similar question myself over the years. As a word it has been used imprecisely to designate just about anything that someone doesn’t like or understand. African-Americans were called evil because of the color of their skin, for instance, and to many fundamentalist Moslems, the United States is the “Great Satan” and Americans are evil. Because of my involvement with the New Age movement, Pat Robertson named me as evil on his television show. When I first heard that he had done that, my initial reaction was one of bewilderment. He didn’t even know me; why would he call me evil? My second reaction was to laugh at the silliness and strangeness of it. My third reaction was concern, for I knew all too well what the fanatics of any religious or political persuasion can do to those whom they judge to be evil.
I have always recognized the existence of “It,” as Andy calls it, a force acting contrary to human wellbeing and wholeness. I feel Andy describes it well. It is a breaker of wholeness. I believe that some of the roots of this force at least originate in us and are fed by our own fears, angers, and lack of wholeness. If I am not whole, then why should you be? How can I prevent you from enjoying the wholeness that I lack? These are the kinds of attitudes that I feel feed this energy. They represent a laziness that doesn’t want to do the serious inner and outer work that leads to wholeness, a work requiring diligent and sometimes painful efforts to love others, and an unwillingness to have another express and gain benefit from what I may be too lazy or unwilling to work for myself.
Whatever the origins of this force, this “It,” we need to recognize and deal with its activity and consequences in ourselves and the world around us. One way to do so, the way Andy has chosen, is the way of the warrior, doing battle against “It.” Other ways are also available, such as the way of the healer or the way of the artist, creating beauty. A person finds and follows the way to which she or he feels called, and each way can help and collaborate with the others.
Should we call “It” evil? When I began lecturing, I found that my audiences reacted badly to the use of this word. As I said, it carries a large amount of baggage of pain and suffering because we have used it too freely to attack and condemn people simply for being different or for acting in ways we personally find uncomfortable. In a way, this overuse of the word serves “It” by diffusing our moral efforts to confront it and transform it. If I turn anything I dislike or don’t understand into the face of evil, how will I recognize true evil when it comes?
There is another paradox here, for if I call something “evil,” am I not myself breaking a wholeness and thereby fostering evil? If I attack what is evil, am I not doing evil’s work by furthering divisiveness and separation?
This is certainly a challenge to be aware of, particularly for someone who follows the way of the Warrior. Our best intentions can sometimes foster the very breaking of wholeness we wish to stop, especially if our attention is only upon conquest and victory. But evil can use the potential confusion of this paradox to diffuse efforts to block its unwholesome ways. To call something “evil” is not to say “it’s not part of the universe and must be gotten rid of.” What we are saying is that here is something that resists and breaks wholeness, and the way to deal with it is to prevent it from doing so and then so enfold and include it that it rediscovers the wholeness it has lost. In effect, from my perspective, I see evil as action, not as beingness, and actions are things I can counter and stop without breaking a larger wholeness.
For years, I didn’t use the word evil in my work. This worked for me because unlike Andy my way is not the way of the Warrior. I am more of a healer in this regard. But like Andy, in recent years I have felt that the forces that work to break wholeness have increased in our world, even as the forces to create wholeness in entire new ways between peoples, nations, religions, and races—and between humanity and nature—have been gaining ground with the advent of new tools of communication such as the Internet and new skills and techniques for non-violent and empathetic communication using these tools. As the strongest nation on earth, at least for the moment—though this could change if we do not get our house in order—it’s not surprising that any efforts to forestall or break up the growth of wholeness at a human species or planetary level would focus on using the resources of this country to do so. If I want to make a huge effect, I will go for the strongest, biggest tool. For the moment that is still the United States. So I have felt over the past ten years or so a concerted focus of “It” to co-opt our politics and businesses to divert America to the cause of un-wholeness or to the breaking of wholeness. And like Andy, I feel “It” has unfortunately been fairly successful at this. Perhaps one reason is that we have lost the capacity to name it.
The term “evil” still carries all the baggage it ever did, and it can still offend people who have been unjustly tarnished or hurt with its brush. But in my own work I’m using the word again because for all its faults, it still carries the impact of simplicity. Perhaps if we think through what evil is, as Andy has attempted to do in his blog, and reject the temptation to use this word frivolously, we can restore to it its powerful capacity to name what threatens us, giving us the moral clarity to take skillful action on behalf of wholeness.
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ABS commentary:
I thank you, David Spangler, for contributing your thoughts to this discussion. Here are a few of the passages from the foregoing that I think are particularly deserving of attention.
“If I am not whole, then why should you be? How can I prevent you from enjoying the wholeness that I lack? These are the kinds of attitudes that I feel feed this energy.”
“[W]e have used [the word 'evil'] too freely to attack and condemn people simply for being different or for acting in ways we personally find uncomfortable. In a way, this overuse of the word serves “It” by diffusing our moral efforts to confront it and transform it.”
“If I want to make a huge effect, I will go for the strongest, biggest tool. For the moment that is still the United States. So I have felt over the past ten years or so a concerted focus of “It” to co-opt our politics and businesses to divert America to the cause of un-wholeness or to the breaking of wholeness.”
“Perhaps if we think through what evil is… and reject the temptation to use this word frivolously, we can restore to it its powerful capacity to name what threatens us, giving us the moral clarity to take skillful action on behalf of wholeness.”
Here’s one passage that I think muddies something:
“What we are saying is that here is something that resists and breaks wholeness, and the way to deal with it is to prevent it from doing so and then so enfold and include it that it rediscovers the wholeness it has lost.”
My reservation has to do with the idea that the “something that resists and breaks wholeness” is the same something that can “rediscover the wholeness that it has lost.” My own sense is that there is the “It” that is the evil, and then there are the things –human systems, human beings– that it infests. Like the difference between the disease and the host: the body of the host can regain a lost wholeness (health), but the disease for which the body is one more vector to facilitate its spread isn’t going to regain any wholeness by our “enfolding” it in a healing way.
February 10th, 2010 at 10:38 pm
“So I have felt over the past ten years or so a concerted focus of “It” to co-opt our politics and businesses to divert America to the cause of un-wholeness or to the breaking of wholeness. And like Andy, I feel “It” has unfortunately been fairly successful at this. Perhaps one reason is that we have lost the capacity to name it.”
” have LOST the capacity to name IT”
Well, if it has been LOST, let me ask you, a thinker, when to you think the capacity was present ? Can you imagine or intuit what those who had the capacity might say ?
How about Sin ? That used to be one expression.
How about real Satanic influence . . extant since first manifest in Eden ?
How about human nature as envy, jealousy, hatred, greed, lust, perversion,
fornication, adultery, cruelty, murder & etc when brought out into action by the absence of GOOD as more than one commented on that previous thread.
How about Satanic Influence which sometimes entices the expression of these sad aspects of human nature and almost imperceptibly urges humans to ignore the prompting of GOOD and give way to these innate responses as the opportunity or provocation is presented.
I suppose that’s too simple and direct, though. Probably to close to the truth
and so we would lose the career of ever exploring and positing and speculating.
And of course that would also lead to the greater question of The Source.
I guess that’s the biggie . . so can’t go there. Hmmm !
February 11th, 2010 at 1:05 am
A maybe an even more sinister aspect of evil is the sense of worldly power, to dominate and subjugate other human beings.
There seem to be two great spiritual drives operating in the world in the midst of human societies.
One is the desire for liberty for oneself and the prompting drive that it should be for all men of good will. In simplidity it might be that each could eat of his own vine and sit under his own fig tree.
THe other is that whch urges to dominate and subjugate the fellow man
whether psychologically, economically and/or militarily
to eat of the other man’s vine, cut up his fig tree for kindling and let him obey to survive.
I wonder if these are not the two purest spiritual forces that have manifested through time and maybe actually the themes that have given us the history of nations and the world.
Which I would say are entirely inexplicable by biological evolution
but answer perfectly to the concepts of a Benevolent Creator God
and a real Spiritual Adversary . . enemy of all good ever in play shaping the course of the world largely according to the choices of mankind.
After considering the alternative concepts . . I am compelled to wonder . . How could it be otherwise ?
February 11th, 2010 at 2:05 am
David Spangler wrote:
“There is another paradox here, for if I call something “evil,” am I not myself breaking a wholeness and thereby fostering evil? If I attack what is evil, am I not doing evil’s work by furthering divisiveness and separation?
“To call something ‘evil’ is not to say ‘it’s not part of the universe and must be gotten rid of.’ What we are saying is that here is something that resists and breaks wholeness, and the way to deal with it is to prevent it from doing so and then so enfold and include it that it rediscovers the wholeness it has lost.”
Thank you, David, and Andy for being willing to continue to think deeply about this confounding and urgent issue.
David,
You point to and capture what I believe to be a key dilemma regarding the “attack and defeat evil” mindset. I have tried to speak to this paradox at times on this blog. My sense continues to be that to frame the issue in this way can – in some contexts – create a vicious circle, or, an impossible/no-win situation, in the same way that would occur if we focused all our energies on separating the trough from the crest of a wave.
And, if we can say that all things in the manifest universe are essentially energy, then this also implies that all existence is “vibration” …..which as we know is comprised of the oscillation of two poles. As Whitehead put it, each element of the universe is “a vibratory ebb and flow of underlying energy or activity.”
As far as I can tell, although we certainly can perceive, name, and deal with separate or seemingly opposite (polar) aspects of this energy – the energy itself has the character of an overarching unity or oneness.
As Wilber put it:
“that all opposites – such as mass and energy, subject and object, life and death – are so much each other that they are perfectly inseparable, still strikes most of us as hard to believe. …To put it plainly, to say that ‘ultimate reality is a unity of opposites’ is actually to say that in ultimate reality there are no boundaries. Anywhere.”
February 11th, 2010 at 2:14 am
David Spangler wrote:
“But in my own work I’m using the word [evil] again because for all its faults, it still carries the impact of simplicity.”
Thanks for articulating and confirming something I’ve intuitively felt.
Just a note:
On a previous thread —
“There IS an *IT*! Should We Call It *Evil*?” —
I am continuing to work on “unpacking” some of the relationships between experiences of Wholeness, Enlightenment, and the (relative) reality of evil.
February 11th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Evil is fueled by conditions of early childhood upbringing. Anthropologist Elliot Leyton, in Hunting Humans, shows how abused children grow to focus on the pain they experienced as children, until as adults, they cannot control the impulse to act out their fantasy. Hitler`s mysterious upbringing, leaves many questions unanswered, but we wonder what happened to him as a child. An Austrian village, where Hitler`s paternal grandmother resided – Doellersheim – was razed by Hitler`s troops; the reason is unknown.
If evil is associated only with humans; damaged children grow to adults as psychopaths, who rise to positions of authority and live among us, until they reveal themselves, by hunting humans. The `It`, is us!
February 11th, 2010 at 10:55 am
I’m with both of you on the existence of this IT and on calling it EVIL as well. And I think you’ve both been eloquent in talking about it, defining it, and naming its qualities. And I think I can ass something of substance to the conversation.
When I was a kid, my dad (A. B. Schmookler) and I sat down to watch a movie called QUEST FOR FIRE. We did not watch the whole thing because early in the film, my dad deemed it too violent for me. That short segment of the film, however, left a lasting impression. Even these many years later, I remember the premise of the film. As I recall, it was about clans of pre-homo-sapiens all of whom wanted fire. Some clans had fire. Some clans lacked fire. All clans lacked the ability to make fire from scratch, and could only make fire from fire. These clans battled each other for control of fire. If clan A wanted fire, it battled clan B to take theirs.
As a kid, I was struck by the futility of all this fighting and death. After all, it doesn’t cost you anything if I light a brand from your fire to take to my home and start my own fire. But this reality, that fire is not lessened by catching on a new fuel source, was somehow lost on these early men. They were ignorant of an important aspect of reality, and frightened by the prospect of lack in their own lives.
This, in my experience of evil, is a crucial element of evil – SELFISHNESS born out of IGNORANCE. Spangler, I think touches on this in his “Why should you be whole If can’t be” paragraph. But I think it goes beyond “misery loves company”, and “if I can’t have it, no one can”. The ignorance of evil blinds the infected party to the wholeness of others. They simply cannot recognize it. “Takes one to know one” is usually applied to epithets and insults, but I think it is more aptly applicable to wholeness and health. And this infection called evil creates in its host a sense of lack – the broken wholeness is palpable but unidentifiable to the infected – and the void cannot be filled, no matter how much wealth, power, food, sex, influence, or chattel is shoveled in. The need to fill that void becomes greater and greater the more the infection of EVIL takes seat.
Which leads me to another important aspect of evil that bares closer attention. This force, this ignorance, is self perpetuating – not only in the unfillable void fashion described above, but also in that it is infectious. Evil can be passed from one person to another. It has evolved, as viruses do, to use our cognitive structure against itself. It has made itself in our image, to fit lock and key in our mind, occluding the truths that would render it obsolete. The evidence for this lies in our prisons. It is so well known as to be cliche that nearly all violent offenders were abused as children. The perpetration of evil against them actually changed the structure of their brains, making avenues of wholeness blocked from view. Abusers go on to abuse and we rightly say, “They don’t know anything else.” We have all had experiences where evil takes hold of us – when t feels as though anger rises in us and we are swept along in its tide, no longer making choices, but having choices make us. Remember Luke in his meeting with the Emperor at the end of Episode VI. The Emperor is trying to feed the infection of evil, give it more power, make Luke hunger for power and lose sight of what his heart values.
And we know stories of “something snapped” where the evil perpetrated against a person became overwhelming, and that person loses the ability to choose as evil begins choosing almost of its own volition.
But these truths of evil’s birth in ignorance and of its virulence are more subtle and cunning as well. They manifest in the small petty jealousies of our lives that lead us to manipulate our loved ones out of fear of loss, telling ourselves that we are caring for them. They manifest in the perceptions of need in the CEOs’ insistence of bonuses that would pay hundreds of their employees’ salaries (the unfillable void). It manifests in the choices made by politicians whose values and desire to govern for the benefit of their constituents becomes overwhelmed by their fear of losing power to “the other side”. They are blind. They see nothing but the chasm of loss. And I feel the evil catching in me in response. I feel the anger and hate rising in me when I see the legislation that I value falling prey to their greed. I have some desire to stride among them as an avenging angel. But evil does not have so great a hold on me that I cannot see it for what it is, and I seek to nurture the better angels of my nature, and I practice letting my heart and mind work together to make choices rather than letting the choices make me in reaction.
And I do this because when I make choices that are consistent with my deepest values, I feel wholer. The void is filled. And I am more satisfied with my material holdings than any fat-cat who gives in to the infection. And I do this because I know something else – that health (health, not good, is the opposite of evil) is also contagious. And what health I have I have also learned from others as well as found within my own composition.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:49 am
Hanu Man Ji, there’s a piece of this quote from you that I just will not buy. And I bet you can guess what it is.
I certainly DO recognize the dangers that the attempt to “defeat” evil will also spread it. But I see that as an inescapable dilemma and challenge, the same way that the Parable of the Tribes describes the tragedy that to defeat power one must wield power.
But this idea that good and evil exist together in a relationship like that between the trough and crest of a wave— that idea I reject. As much as I remain open to the level of the Oneness of the mystics, I also do trust the abundant evidence that in this world, not all is Oneness, that WHoleness is incomplete, and that the destructive patterns do not form part of some Wave of which the constructive patterns are the other part, like trough and crest.
That’s what I was saying earlier about good and evil not being like up and down.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:57 am
There’s one other point I’d like to make regarding that film QUEST FOR FIRE. I may have stopped your watching it because it was too violent for a child. But I myself stopped watching it because it perpetuates our culture’s usual calumny against human nature. Not only are these primitive peoples violent and cannibalistic, they also are shown diving into sex without so much as a howdydo–as if it were the nature of nature to be chaotic. We see throughout nature that reproductive rituals are finely worked out, but this film would have us believe that it is only civilization and culture that keeps men from acting like thoughtless rapists.
Promulgating the idea that the animals are “bestial” and “brutal” –and then using these animal-related words to describe atrocities like Auschwitz, as if such evils were to be found in the animal world– and the idea that “civilized” can only be a term of approbation– these are part of the propaganda of our civilization to get us to identify with IT and to reject that which we have from before we became civilized creatures.
The relevance to the issue of Evil is this: the QUEST FOR FIRE locates evil in human nature, whereas I believe the evidence suggests that MOST* of human brokenness derives from the selection for power that has warped the evolution of CIVILIZATION.
* Most, I say, but not perhaps all. I posted here some months ago a possible modification of my previous (P of T) optimism about human nature. (See “THE PARABLE OF THE TRIBES After a Quarter Century: A Revision” at http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=4088.)
February 11th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Andy,
Yes, I’m aware of our apparent difference re- this issue, As noted, I am working toward a solution based on “levels of reality” on the -
“There IS an *IT*! Should We Call It *Evil*?” thread.
My sense is that as humans we have the capacity to live at and perceive – more than one level – while keeping these in a balance in our lives.
February 11th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
So what is the relationship between these two levels, HMJ? Or, to put the same question a bit more specifically: if one sees how the destructive patterns operate independently in history from the wholeness patterns, and if one sees that the wholeness patterns do not require the destructive patterns for their existence, as the systems work, as for example the troughs and crests cannot exist without each other, then what happens to that level of the reality at this presumed OTHER LEVEL of reality in which one might say of good and evil that they are like trough and wave?
February 11th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Well, ultimately redemption and transcendence are always possibilities, but even under the best of circumstances, the path is usually incremental. Inasmuch as we are all still stumbling around in the realm of duality, it’s probably more efficacious in the near term (as measured in human lifetimes) to find a practical way to deal with what troubles us. The first step is giving it a name. The second is drawing a line. Getting lost in metaphysical speculation can be a trap. Even Almaas suggests we take action when threatened.
February 11th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Aaron pointed out the myth of the zero sum game, i.e., that engaging, collaborating, giving, etc. leaves the actor less than before. Reality, and lots of research suggest that cooperation not competition adds value when more and more people engage in it. Cooperative action does require an element of trust, because no one knows 100% that the extended hand won’t be met with the sword. But all other alternatives point toward doom.
February 11th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Well guys, now that you have given the Force a couple of names–Evil and It–what new action are you going to take to overcome Evil? After so much reflection on Evil surely new strategies must be formulated that no one has yet thought of.
February 11th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Thank you, David Sprangler for this post. I have a lot to say about this topic but am too tired right now to comment.
Bess, I do not think it is possible to overcome evil. I think it is a force that ‘is’, and even needed, one that helps balance this universe whether we like it or not.
just a thought,
Katrin
February 11th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
Bess, are you kidding ?! Ho ! ho !
February 12th, 2010 at 1:29 am
“When you look at the surface of the ocean, you can see waves coming up and going down. You can describe these waves in terms of high or low, big or small, more vigorous, more beautiful or less beautiful.
“You can describe a wave in terms of beginning and end, birth and death. That can be compared to the historical dimension. In the historical dimension, we are concerned with birth and death, more powerful, less powerful, more beautiful, less beautiful, beginning and end and so on.
“Looking deeply, we can also see that the waves are at the same time water. A wave may like to seek its own true nature….
“Water is free from the birth and death of a wave. Water is free from high and low, more beautiful and less beautiful. You can talk in terms of more beautiful and less beautiful, high or low, only in terms of waves. As far as water is concerned, all these concepts are invalid.
“Our true nature is the nature of no birth and no death. We do not have to go anywhere in order to touch our true nature. The wave does not have to look for water because she is water. We do not have to look for God, we do not have to look for our ultimate dimension or nirvana, because we are nirvana, we are God.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh
February 12th, 2010 at 1:31 am
“We come to the practice of meditation seeking relief from our suffering, and meditation can teach us how to transform our suffering and obtain basic relief. But the deepest kind of relief is the realization of nirvana.
“There are two dimensions to life, and we should be able to touch both. One is like a wave, and we call it the historical dimension. The other is like the water, and we call it the ultimate dimension, or nirvana. We usually touch just the wave, but when we discover how to touch the water, we receive the highest fruit that meditation can offer.
“…the immeasurable suchness of all things appears to us more clearly. Whether we are cleaning the house, driving the car or talking to friends, practicing deep…mindfulness allows us to touch the phenomenal dimension of existence so deeply that the ultimate dimension begins to reveals itself.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh
February 12th, 2010 at 8:33 am
I agree that evil and its opposite aren’t always laid out there on a platter for one to easily and righteously process. Sometimes the Gray is a colorless, unidentifiable fog amidst the Light and the Dark. Most of us DO OFTEN struggle to maintain a non-manipulative, productive nature within ourselves and our personal relationships.
Many substantive thoughts so far… I’ve taken much solace over the years in the concept of certitude, as it applies to religion and/or spirituality. I believe I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating the deep meaning of certitude, re this area of life (NOT that I’ve attained a level of full contentment. I haven’t.). But I am satisfied to know how this has ‘opened the doors (blinders?)’ for me, so to say. I’m able to effectively choose the sustainable force in which I rely on for real happiness instead of choosing a mounting disturbance of unnecessary doubt. It’s not easy, especially with family members, neighbors and millions living among me who are entranced by a Fox News Channel. Even when the precariousness of life overwhelms, or, as Aaron mentions, when choices are making US, that’s when a good grasping of certitude can be used as an immediate, basic mechanism for locating inner strength and balance.
The question and answer below comes from a short interview I found on beliefnet.com (Go to gracecathedral.org) with Paul Raushenbush & Rev. William Sloane Coffin. The title above this transcripted interview is “The Last Great Liberal Voice?” Below is one answer, in particular, that resonated with me.
What about heaven and hell?
Sloane Coffin: They’re both very powerful symbols of life with God and life alienated from God. In that sense, heaven and hell begin right now on earth. I do believe in an afterlife, not with intellectual certainty, but with a kind of psychological certitude or spiritual certitude, because I believe that God goes from God, in God, to God again. Having caught on a little to what love is all about, it would be too bad not to go on with that kind of relationship and knowledge. But basically that’s in God’s hands. If I know who’s there I don’t have to know what’s there.
February 12th, 2010 at 8:48 am
WSC: “If I know who’s there I don’t have to know what’s there.” In other words, always seek to recognize how someone is genuinely open to you. If you’re continually wondering and looking for some connection or to see “what’s there” then you’ve blinded yourself already.
February 12th, 2010 at 10:28 am
M. Scott Peck, in his second book, The People of the Lie, describes his encounters as a psychologist with patients so damaged that they perpetrate evil on (usually) the people closest to them. Even in the face of pretty creepy stuff, Peck was clearly struggling to hold to his conviction that he was indeed witnessing evil. That struggle, and the creepiness, made an impression on me.
February 12th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
To me, something feels amiss with those couple of comments that seemed to have at their core a criticism based on the idea that discussing something like this implies abdicating the responsibility to take constructive action to address the world’s problems.
Setting aside the point (made by me several times) that understanding WHAT we’re dealing with is an essential foundation for ACTING against it effectively, there remains some mystery in my mind about why such a discussion would elicit such a criticism.
WHile we’ve been discussing this matter of the “It” that I think underlies this darkness at work in America, and that I think warrants being called Evil, I’ve also shoveled out my car three times from fallen and drifted snow, and I’ve baked two batches of bread, three loaves a batch, and various other such things.
Would one criticize such employments because the time and energy I put into them were not put into “action” to address this darkness?
If not, why criticize this one entry, or with the other, two, out of the many others that appear here that deal with issues that are at the more immediate, timely, and superficial level of our politics?
Also, while one of our critics (above) seems to take pleasure in imagining that liberals –and intellectuals more specifically– are big on head-trips but are not capable of real, feet-on-the-ground, roll-up-the-shirtsleeves type action in the world, while this discussion of evil has been going on, I for one have also put in a phone call to my representative in the state legislature to oppose an environmentally destructive proposal, have signed two petitions about issues at the national level, and have had conversations with two political organizer/activists in my region in furtherance of one of my central projects.
I expect that others who have participated in these discussions have also been making “active” contributions at the same time.
Which leads me to wonder about why it is that, in response to a discussion like this, about more foundational and timeless beliefs, some people feel a need, as a form of chastisement, it seems, to raise the banner of political action as something we apparently are in danger of forgetting.
February 12th, 2010 at 10:07 pm
From Ken Wilber’s book, “No Boundary:”
“Adam was the first to delineate nature, to mentally divide it up, mark it off, diagram it. Adam was the first great mapmaker; Adam drew boundaries.
“So instead of handling and manipulating real objects, Adam could manipulate in his head these magic names which stood for the objects themselves. So successful was this mapping of nature that, to this day, our lives are largely spent in drawing boundaries. Every decision we make, our every action, our every word is based on the construction, conscious of unconscious, of boundaries.
“The peculiar thing about a boundary is that, however complex and rarefied it might be, it actually marks off nothing but an inside and an outside., For example, we can draw the very simplest form of a boundary line as a circle, and see that it discloses an inside versus an outside.
“But notice that the opposites ‘inside vs. outside’ didn’t exist in themselves until we drew the boundary on the circle. It is the boundary line in other words, which creates pair of opposites, in short, to draw boundaries is to manufacture opposites…And the world of opposites is world of conflict.
“The root of the whole difficulty is our tendency to view the opposites as irreconcilable, as totally set apart and divorced from one another.
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“Now our habitual way of trying to solve these problems is to attempt to eradicate one of the opposites. We handle the problem of good vs. evil by trying to exterminate evil. We handle the problem of life vs.. death by trying to hide death under symbolic immortalities. In philosophy we handle conceptual opposites by dismissing one of the poles or trying to reduce it to the other.
“The point is that we always tend to treat the boundary as real and then manipulate the opposites created by the boundary.
“The goal of separating the opposites and then clinging to or pursuing the positive halves seems to be a distinguishing characteristic of progressive Western civilization – its religion, science, medicine and industry…”
*****
“As Korzybski and the general semanticists have pointed out, our words, symbols, signs, and thoughts and ideas are merely maps of reality, not reality itself, [i.e.] “the map is not the territory.” But we live in the world of maps and words as if it were the real world…
“The ultimate metaphysical secret, if we dare state it so simply is that there are no boundaries in the universe. Boundaries are illusions, products not of reality, but of the way we map and edit reality. And while it is fine to map out the territory, it is fatal to confuse the two.
“Initially this sounds very strange, because we are so used to believing in boundaries.
“Thus, the sole aim of the Eastern (and esoteric Western) ways of liberation is to deliver people from the conflicts and complexities of the battles by delivering them from their boundaries. They do not try to solve the battle in its own terms, for that is as impossible as washing off blood with blood…”
February 13th, 2010 at 12:51 am
Excerpts from Olaf Stapledon’s Starmaker, reportedly hailed by Arthur C. Clarke as unparalleled: the greatest science fiction book ever written.
The Story: The individual self of the writer has joined other selves, touring the reaches of past and future time and of space, everywhere. As the novel progresses, the planetary-level consciousness joins solar systems-like consciousness and in time merges into galaxy-wide consciousness.
Inter-galactic sharing of consciousness fuses into “the mind of the universe” and finally faces the Starmaker (God, the Creator) who stands in the same relation to it as an artist to his work.
It is this only this cosmical mind who finally encounters the Starmaker, so far “beyond the beyond,” experienced as if in a dream….
**********************************************
The climax of the book is the “supreme moment of the cosmos”, when the cosmical mind (a synthesis of all the worlds that have achieved intellectual clarity and spiritual lucidity) attains momentary contact with the “Star Maker.”
******************************************
“This time, however, She dealt more sensitively with the medium of his creation. The crude spiritual “material” which She objectified from his own hidden depth for the formation of his new creature was molded to his still tentative purpose with more sympathetic intelligence, with more respect for its nature and its potentiality, though with detachment from its more extravagant demands.
“To speak thus of the universal creative spirit is almost childishly anthropomorphic. For the life of such a spirit, if it exists at all, must be utterly different from human mentality, and utterly inconceivable to man. Nevertheless, since this childish symbolism did force itself upon me, I record it. In spite of its crudity, perhaps it does contain some genuine reflection of the truth, however distorted……
“Thus although this new cosmos was my own cosmos, I regarded it from a surprising angle of vision. No longer did it appear as a familiar sequence of historical events beginning with the initial physical explosion and advancing to the final death. I saw it now not from within the flux of the cosmical time but quite otherwise.
“I watched the fashioning of the cosmos in the time proper to the Star Maker; and the sequence of the Star Maker’s creative acts was very different from the sequence of historical events.
“First he conceived from the depth of his own being a something, neither mind nor matter, but rich in potentiality, and in suggestive traits, gleams, hints for his creative imagination.
“Over this fine substance for a long while he pondered. It was a medium in which the one and the many demanded to be most subtly dependent upon one another; in which all parts and all characters must pervade and be pervaded by all other parts and all other characters; in which each thing must seemingly be but an influence in all other things; and yet the whole must be no other than the sum of all its parts, and each part an all-pervading determination of the whole.
“It was a cosmical substance in which any individual spirit must be, mysteriously, at once an absolute self and a mere figment of the whole.
“This most subtle medium, the Star Maker now rough-hewed into the general form of a cosmos. Thus he fashioned a still indeterminate space-time, as yet quite ungeometrized; an amorphous physicality with no clear quality or direction, no intricacy of physical laws; a more distinctly conceived vital trend and epic adventure of mentality; and a surprisingly definite climax and crown of spiritual lucidity.
“This last, though its situation in the cosmical time was for the most part late, was given a certain precision of outline earlier in the sequence of creative work than any other factor in the cosmos. And it seemed to me that this was so because the initial substance itself so clearly exposed its own potentiality for some such spiritual form.
“Thus it was that the Star Maker at first almost neglected the physical minutiae of his work, neglected also the earlier ages of cosmical history, and devoted his skill at first almost entirely to shaping the spiritual climax of the whole creature. Not till he had blocked in unmistakably the most awakened phase of the cosmical spirit did he trace any of the variegated psychological trends which, in the cosmical time, should lead up to it.
“Not till he had given outline to the incredibly diverse themes of mental growth did he give attention fully to constructing the biological evolutions and the physical and geometrical intricacy which could best evoke the more subtle potentialities of his still rough-hewn cosmical spirit. But, as he geometrized, he also intermittently turned again to modify and elucidate the spiritual climax itself. Not till the physical and geometrical form of the cosmos was almost completely fashioned could he endow the spiritual climax with fully concrete individuality.
“When he had given the last touches to all the cosmical ages from the supreme moment back to the initial explosion and on to the final death, the Star Maker contemplated his work. And he saw that it was good.
“As he lovingly, though critically, reviewed our cosmos in all its infinite diversity and in its brief moment of lucidity, I felt that he was suddenly filled with reverence for the creature that he had made, or that he had ushered out of his own secret depth by a kind of divine self-midwifery.
“He knew that this creature, though imperfect, though a mere creature, a mere figment of his own creative power, was yet in a manner more real than himself. For beside this concrete splendor what was he but a mere abstract potency of creation? Moreover in another respect the thing that he had made was his superior, and his teacher.
“For as he contemplated this the loveliest and subtlest of all his works with exultation, even with awe, its impact upon him changed him, clarifying and deepening his will. As he discriminated its virtue and its weakness, his own perception and his own skill matured.”…
February 13th, 2010 at 3:24 am
ABS wrote:
“As much as I remain open to the level of the Oneness of the mystics, I also do trust the abundant evidence that in this world, not all is Oneness, that Wholeness is incomplete, and that the destructive patterns do not form part of some Wave of which the constructive patterns are the other part, like trough and crest.
*****
Once again, this is extraordinary complex when considered from the relative level of reality that comprises our everyday lives and challenges.
The simplist way I’ve heard it said is via the “Ram Dass-ism:”
“We’re (or it is) all One, – and – you stole my TV”…..
***
Another wise person once said, “We need to keep our contexts straight.”
***
My understanding is that the distinction named “good and evil” is quite valid and consequential on relative levels (the historic dimension) and invalid (or perhaps it would be more apropos to say, “irrelevant”) at the level of primordial, Ultimate Reality.
It is said that the Himalayan saint Neem Karoli Baba sometimes would have just one toe painted red. The message? “Live your daily life dharmicly (righteously), and do what needs to be done to make the world better – love others, serve others…. At the same time do not lose your connection with the all-pervasive Infinite Consciousness at the core of reality: “keep one toe in the Absolute.”
*****
In the Mah?bh?rata we find Krishna (a human incarnation of God) at the famous battle of Kurukshetra, where he tells his foremost disciple and renowned warrior, Arjuna, that he Must do his duty as a soldier and lead his troups into battle.
Arjuna, meanwhile, shudders at the thought of killing beloved family members who have “joined the dark side.” At the very beginning of the dialogue, he throws down his legendary bow and arrow, and in both despair and defiance, states: “I will not fight.”
This dialogue is the essence of the sacred text known as the Bhagavad Gita, “The Song of God,” in which Krishna reveals to Arjuna, in a soul-shattering moment, “the One behind the Many.” Krishna demonstrates the eternal truth that all things are “empty of self-nature.”
Arjuna had believed that it is he who would be leading the charge and murdering revered mentors, beloved kinsmen and friends. However, by allowing Arjuna to see His own (Krishna’s) infinite nature, he simultaneously demonstrates the eternal “God-Nature” of all beings and phenomena.
When the moment is finally ripe, Krishna pulls back the veil (maya) and Arjuna sees, that at deepest and most fundamental level of reality, neither he, Arjuna – nor his enemies – exist as separate beings.
The relative truth remains. Evil must be confronted and defeated…and in the upcoming battle many of the “unrighteous” humans will be destroyed. At the same time, the reality is that it is impossible for these beings to die…for this is the one thing that the True Self is utterly incapable of doing.
Arjuna will slay his foes; yet he should not kid himself for a moment: it is pure delusion to think that he will be killing the true Self of those playing the role of his “enemies.”
Underneath all the complexities and drama, the Sturm and Drang – the Reality, could not be more simple. The Universal Self – that which we actually Are – is never born and never dies. Whatever name we give “It,” the very quintessence of our true Self is that it is Infinite and Eternal.
This is the final vision of the mystics, reflecting what Huston Smith, in reviewing spirituality across time and cultures has called “the human unanimity.”
February 13th, 2010 at 3:51 am
The Buddha called this kind of awakening from delusion a “turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness.”
Jack Kornfield writes: “The deepest level of delusion is called “misperception of reality.” This level is hard to face because it threatens some of our most cherished assumptions.”
Andy wrote:
“As much as I remain open to the level of the Oneness of the mystics, I also do trust the abundant evidence that in this world, not all is Oneness, that Wholeness is incomplete.”
As clearly as I can see things the actuality seems that at the Final or Ultimate level of reality, there is nothing other than Wholeness.
What we see (and need to deal with) as the fractionalizing forces and lack of wholeness (disjointed fractions everywhere) is simply an reflection of a deep level of delusion. It is a delusion by 99.99% of us>>>
February 13th, 2010 at 6:58 am
It is so interesting how easily we can Google authors and counsellors and advisors or what who have written books.
In rewiewing what is given of the lives and thinking of some of these who are often quoted a question seriously comes to mind :
Is a person less disoriented or mentally ill because he can verbalize his spiritual confusion and others buy his books ?
February 13th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Once again, David, you predictably choose the route of indirectness to hide your need to “make wrong” that which you don’t understand. And, as usual, I stand ready to have an open and mutual exchange any time. So far you’ve been unwilling to come out into the open and just debate/have a dialogue about this or that.
Let’s just say that your wish to obliquely deride and sneer at others (including me) is not your most mature self. C’mon man, you’re better than that.
February 14th, 2010 at 12:22 am
Here’s some comments on a few of the things said above.
David R said, “How about real Satanic influence . . extant since first manifest in Eden ?
How about human nature as envy, jealousy, hatred, greed, lust, perversion,
fornication, adultery, cruelty, murder & etc when brought out into action by the absence of GOOD as more than one commented on that previous thread.”
It has been said that conservatives think human nature is basically bad and liberals think human nature is basically good, and all else flows from that. Despite being very liberal, I think both those viewpoints are wrong: it seems obvious to me that human nature is a complex mixture of both bad and good. We can quite naturally express “envy, jealousy, hatred, greed, lust, perversion, fornication, adultery, cruelty, murder & etc”, but we can also quite naturally express compassion, sympathy, generosity, tolerance, faithfulness, loyalty, honesty, heroism, courage and etc.
It seems to me one of the biggest things that determines whether we react to a situation with the bad or the good constellations is fear. Fear makes us cowardly, cruel, and selfish, except in the presence of great love. Love, confidence, lack of fear, makes us react with compassion and generosity. So, the forces of evil have been promoting fear. The GOP has been trying hard to turn us into a nation of cowards. They seem to be succeeding.
And to go back to the first sentence in the quote above; just a quibble, because it’s not really part of this discussion, but the influence of Satan in Eden was not necessarily evil. After all, it was the Serpent who told the truth and God who lied…. http://www.paganlibrary.com/fundies/other_people.php
“One is the desire for liberty for oneself and the prompting drive that it should be for all men of good will. In simplidity it might be that each could eat of his own vine and sit under his own fig tree.
THe other is that whch urges to dominate and subjugate the fellow man
whether psychologically, economically and/or militarily
to eat of the other man’s vine, cut up his fig tree for kindling and let him obey to survive.”
This is a good way to express the dichotomy. But I think the urge to dominate and subjugate our fellow man derives from fear. If we expect that others will try to dominate us rather than live and let live, then we are prompted to do it first. The need to accumulate wealth and power comes from a lack of confidence that what we need will be there when we need it: fear.
February 14th, 2010 at 3:09 am
Interviewing Ken Wilber –
On the Nature of a Post-Metaphysical Spirituality
One of your books, The Marriage of Sense and Soul , is subtitled: “Integrating Science and Religion”–this could be seen as the motto for your oeuvre as a whole. Many scientists I have met get very skeptical when they hear about this. They suspect that, instead of integrating religion and science, you smuggle religion into science, which can only lead to bad science. Science and religion are two discourses that never meet–water is H2O or holy water, there is nothing in between. What would your comment be on that?
*******
KW:
Well, your scientist friends would be entirely correct if by “religion” we meant the common or typical meaning, which is that religion is essentially the mythic wave of development (red to blue).
Most “integrations” of science and religion involve things such as Christian theologians attempting to smuggle their theology into the tenets of natural science, and thus “prove” that the Big Bang was created by their specific God–Jehovah–and that “integrates” science and religion!
I reject that approach entirely. It is yet another example of the metaphysical approach to the problem of higher states and stages. A post-metaphysical and reconstructive science proceeds by quite different means: it is based on direct evidence gathered by an investigation of those who have repeatedly demonstrated competence at the postrational waves of development.
This involves both a rational reconstruction of the essential elements or deep features of these higher stages and a call to develop these higher stages in oneself by taking up the practices of transformative practice that have been empirically demonstrated to accelerate the unfolding of these higher waves.
These direct spiritual experiences are entirely compatible with a general scientific attitude that demands evidence, carried out through research, and grounded at every point in experiment and experience. This is the post-Kantian and post-metaphysical approach that I have suggested for spiritual studies as part of a larger integral studies. The “religion” you refer to is pre-Kantian, dogmatic, and mythic, an approach suited only to premodern waves of evolution.
February 14th, 2010 at 3:24 am
Andy,
Would you kindly clarify, or better perhaps, unpack this part of your question?
“if one sees how the destructive patterns operate independently in history from the wholeness patterns, and if one sees that the wholeness patterns do not require the destructive patterns for their existence, as the systems work…”
February 14th, 2010 at 5:16 am
*************
Andrew Bard Schmookler Says:
February 11th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
“So what is the relationship between these two levels, HMJ? Or, to put the same question a bit more specifically: if one sees how the destructive patterns operate independently in history from the wholeness patterns, and if one sees that the wholeness patterns do not require the destructive patterns for their existence, as the systems work, as for example the troughs and crests cannot exist without each other, then what happens to that level of the reality at this presumed OTHER LEVEL of reality in which one might say of good and evil that they are like trough and wave?”
*************
Andy,
I’ll take a “pre-clarification” shot at your question, as I understand it.
If we “cut to the chase” by traversing all the various levels of consciousness, we find ourselves face to face with what Paul Tillich called “The Ground of Being.”
In the very next moment we may “merge with,” or more accurately, “real-ize” that we ARE and always have been “IT.” Paradoxically, when this occurs, the “experience” itself disappears.
Said another way – “experiencer, experiencing, and that which is experienced” are known (as a function of Pure Being) as one undivided process.
At this level “trough and crest” become subsumed and enfolded within what might be called a “super-ordinate unity.” It is recognized that The Source, Ground of Being, or God “contains” within Itself the immeasurable, fathomless, limitless depth of Being – a pleroma of infinite potentiality from which emanates all entities, beings, processes, and ideas.
Yet we can only use language to point to this Reality/Presence (like a finger pointing at the moon). Even the most poetic language arises from the foundation of our everyday, rational mind. Unity consciousness can only be “experienced” via levels of consciousness that are far more subtle and refined than our usual discriminating, discursive, cognitive processes.
********
At the initial stages of unity consciousness, it would appear that perceptions/conceptions of phenomena which we might call “good vs. evil are experienced as differentiated from one another and at the same time, aspects of an inseparable, interpenetrating unity. Here, good and evil exist within (as Aurobindo described), “a supramental harmony.
Good and evil are experienced as somehow united: each process a direct and naked expressions of the Primordial Unity, the One.
Sri Aurobindo:
“Overmind Consciousness is global in its cognition and can hold any number of seemingly fundamental differences together in a reconciling vision. What to the mental reason are irreconcilable differences present themselves to the Overmind intelligence as coexistent correlatives; what to the mental reason are contraries are to the Overmind intelligence complimentarities.”
Beyond this level of awareness, which is sometimes referred to as “the Void,” we realize that, literally, ultimately, profoundly, as Wittgenstein put it, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.”
As Wilber suggested:
“It is……God alone who looks through your eyes, listens with your ears, and speaks with your tongue.”
*******
Next: the implications for the suject at hand re- living and perceiving at more than one level of consciousness.
February 14th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Hello Kim, read your link just for fun; kinda cute.
Are you one of the Other People ? I years ago accepted the ‘solution’
to the ‘confict’ of the ‘peoples’ and put my conclusions out on the web in ’01 or ’02
titled The Great Compromise
in which I aclnowledge how you Other People may well have ascended
and become contemporary with our ancestors the Adamic race.
And I was able to explain ( at least for myself) how genes of both
types of people are now carried in the same family through intermarriage and so some siblings seemingly of the same family actually sometimes manifest the dominant traits of
The Other People.
It’s a several page piece but very convincing ! I didn’t necessarily believe it myself but it does make the differences we find understandable in a ‘natural’ way for those who like to live in their imaginations.
Don’t know if I can find it but if found might fwd to Andy. May be too long for NSB but it does offer you Other People acceptance as you are maybe just being Who You Really Are.
Many have possibly wrongly thought you were just trying to escape Traditional Understandings into ‘Freedom’ and ‘Goodness’!
It’s possible I may have been inspired by . I suppose . .the realization
that we must move toward greater unity on SOME basis and so I offered The Great Compromise.
February 14th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
But I think the urge to dominate and subjugate our fellow man derives from fear. If we expect that others will try to dominate us rather than live and let live, then we are prompted to do it first. The need to accumulate wealth and power comes from a lack of confidence that what we need will be there when we need it: fear.-Kim
I hate to be the one to tell you but your idea seems to be based on the notion of the ‘goodness’ and ‘fairness’ in the temperament and disposition of our fellows.
That if it were not for fear of one sort or another they would all want to live on a level field and relate one to one.
Hardly ! Even astrology will show you that there are types regardless of personal security who have the drive to dominate and subjugate and control.
Some to establish order and ‘justice’ and others have some rather unwholesome drives. And a fuller observation confirms it.
They are born.
February 14th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
David R: “Even astrology will show you that there are types regardless of personal security who have the drive to dominate and subjugate and control.”
Doesn’t Kim answer this, David R: Kim: “…it seems obvious to me that human nature is a complex mixture of both bad and good.”
February 14th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
“If you think me and Ollie North [Reagan operative implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal] are one, then you better get another massage…because you are irrelevant.”
—–Abbie Hoffman (circa 1968)
**********************************************************************************************************
So, turning to questions concerning the trough/crest nature of Wholeness/Brokenness or “Good/Evil:”
To date I’ve made efforts to illuminate this (actually quite profound) conundrum via the words of diverse thinkers and writers, including Ken Wilber, Thich Nhat Hanh, Olaf Stapledon, and Jack Kornfield on this thread; and on the original thread ,”There IS an *IT*! Should We Call It *Evil*?,”the words of Neem Karoli Baba, Meister Eckhart, Jean Gebser, Sri Aurobindo, Huston Smith, Seng Ts’an, and R.H. Bythe.
The unifying ground shared by these various voices is the experience of “unity consciousness,” itself, as well as the idea/experience of “levels of being.”
It is a mistake to imagine that this unity is merely a flatland kind of merging of black and white, or good and evil into an amorphous third category. If it were, critics would be correct in pointing out that such a formulation would simply lead us to not take evil seriously, and would undermine any plan of action in relation to it. The “oneness” to which genuine non-dual awareness refers is to be found at an entirely different level.
As Woodhouse has observed:
“The great sages have made clear that the highest state, undifferentiated Truth, is indescribable and transcends the very distinction between the One and the Many…the One is a condition of the many, not one among many.”
“For this reason, the Tao is chacterized as both nameless and formless. The word “Tao” functions as a placemaker that refers to …an Infinite Ground….In this sense the Godhead is not One among many. but a nondual condition [which makes possible the drawing of any and all distinctions, including that of] the One and the Many.”
The very first point of manifestion from formless, absolute, infinite Being into any form of phenomenal existence (the universe) takes place via the appearance of a primordial distinction (In Taoism, “yin and yang”). Paradoxically, the absolute manifests as the “conditioned,” bounded and finite world of many things (such as good and evil) – and yet remains itself remains unconditioned, unbounded and infinite.
For me, Thich Nhat Hanh expresses the good/evil dilemma in a very understandable way via the image of a multitude of individual waves, on the one hand, and the “wetness” of ocean water on the other. It is less that ocean somehow “gives birth” to its waves – as the One might be imagined to give birth to the Many (including all forms of brokenness and fracturing).
A better way to illustrate this phenomenon may be via the image of an infinite (wavy) line, naturally composed of a number waves (crest and trough, up and down). The difference between the line itself and the waves becomes merely a matter of perspective.
And, as we practice one or more of meditative disciplines (from any number of world traditions), what is revealed within the silent depths of our being is the Nature of Being Itself. This is an ontological level which, paradoxically, includes both existence and non- existence). Meditation/Prayer empowers us in the grand post-modern project which can be thought of “the recovery of Being.”
February 15th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Discussing the nature of our universe in its light and dark dimensions, Gandhi, a spiritual warrior if ever there was one, said that God is…
“a self-existent, all knowing, living Force which inheres in every other force known to the world and which depends on none, and which will live when all other forces may conceivably perish or cease to act.”
February 15th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
I’d like to bring some of ideas I’ve been writing about, closer to home. My primary argument to date has been gone along the lines of:
what seems to be missing from the position that the brokenness (created by processes we are calling evil) and the wholeness created by processes we are calling good are mutually exclusive – is the multidimensional concept of “levels of being and consciousness,” which in turn creates more confusion.
*****
From a symposium on the potential relationship between psychology spirituality, this discussion, which included Ram Dass and Jack Kornfield, was called “Psychological Adjustment Is Not Liberation.”
Kornfield: “There really are two levels of practice in any spiritual tradition….the psychological level of practice [which involves ethics] …aims at establishing a harmonious community… [one which allows] people to live together without exploitation.
“There is another level of practice, however, which is really inspired by the greatest teachers and saints. It comes from the most profound kind of archetypal possibility for human development.
“This level of practice requires a very deep transformation, a death of who you think you are.”
February 15th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
(con’t)
Levels of Consciousness, Levels of Being…what obtains at one level is not necessarily the case at another.
*************
Kornfield: “There has been such an interchange between spiritual practice and psychological growth and human potential movements that there is a prevalent notion, at least in the psychological world, that western psychology can actually get you to the same place as spiritual practice.
I think this is really quite a dangerous assumption. From my observation of how psychological techniques work, I see that although they can lead to some very useful growth and transformation, they do not develop the penetrating insight that helps one cut through the deeper layers of illusion and hallucinations about individual separateness.”
Ram Dass: “I would like to reinforce what Jack said, concerning psychological systems taking over and preempting spiritual terminologies. By turning them toward worldly ends, they close the door conceptually to a lot of people who could go further spiritually, but would have to go into much deeper practices.”
February 16th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Here, I want to continue looking at the good/evil issue from the perspective of both emanating from a single, unitive awareness/ground. This “ground of existence” (as Tillich called it) is described -
(by those who claim to have experienced “IT” – [a different 'IT' from its use in the title of this thread])
- in Buddhism as formless, infinite, eternal, uncreated, deathless, self-existent, self-illuminated — “The Clear Light”
- In Hinduism it is given the referred to as “Sat, Chit, Ananda” —
Infinite Existence, Infinite Awareness (or knowledge/comprehension) and Infinite Bliss (the bliss of superabundant plentitude or Wholeness).
In the latest advances in systems theory, systems are understood to be composed of “holons.” **
From the perspective of the mystic – not only matter and life, but consciousness as well, is seen as being composed of level after level of ever-finer, more subtle, and more encompassing modes of awareness. These dimensions, states, or stages finally culminate in state of “God (or Self) – Realization, also known as the “Non-Dual” or the Boundless, within which any and all boundaries can (and should) be drawn. So to speak, it is the Context of All Contexts.
———————————————————————–
** Arthur Koestler in his book Ghost in The Machine, is usually credited with coining the concept of “holon.”
A holon is a system which is simultaneously a whole in and itself at the same time being nested within another holon and so is a part of something much larger than itself. Holons can be considered to range in size from the smallest subatomic particles and strings, to the multiverse, comprising many universes.
which means an entity in a hierarchy that is at once a whole and at the same time a part. Thus a holon at once operates as a quasi-autonomous whole that integrates its parts, while working to integrate itself into an upper level purpose or role.
A holon is a system
February 16th, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Further reflections on the good/evil polarity – Ken Wilber Online:
“In some deep, awesome, mysterious way, everything that happens is all of a piece. There is indeed something called ‘good’ over here, and something called ‘bad’ over there. But both of them are necessary pieces of this great work of Art called manifestation.
“Just as a beautiful painting has both light and dark shades, so this world necessarily has both good and evil, both pleasure and pain, both life and death: you could not see this world without both, it would not even exist as a manifest event.
“Now the average person pursues happiness by trying to find one-half of the pairs of opposites: by trying to find pleasure without pain, life without death, good without evil, health without sickness, left without right, inside without outside, up without down….
“[It is possible instead - and with a clear mind and open compassionate heart] -”to rejoice in the unity of the opposites, the vast play of pairs as they erotically unite throughout the manifest realm, their secret joy lighting up the night with screams of their uncontainable delight.”
“The great mystical texts, both East and West, always speak, in hushed terms, of the liberated one, the enlightened one, the one who is awakened, the one who understands the ultimate secret of the universe. And you know how this enlightened one is described? He or she, it is said, is ‘ freed from the pairs .’
“Freed from the pairs of opposites, freed from the dualistic nightmare of tearing the universe in two and trying to identify with only half of reality while running away from the other half. You tear yourself in half as well, and that torn and fractured condition is known by many names, the most common of which is suffering. But wholeness lies in the other direction…
“Even while we fight to lessen evil–and we should–and punish wrongdoing–and we should–and work ceaselessly to right wrongs–and we should–there is a sense that the world is Profoundly Okay.
“As dear Aldous Huxley put it, ‘And then there is the sense that in spite of Everything –I suppose this is the Ultimate [Expereince of the mystics –in spite of Pain, in spite of Death, in spite of Horror, the universe is in some way All Right, capital A, capital R….’”
February 16th, 2010 at 10:12 pm
(con’t)
The previous post and this one are excerpted from his novel Boomeritis and titled, “The Deconstruction of the World Trade Center–A Date That Will Live in a Sliding Chain of Signifiers:”
“People who haven’t had this experience of cosmic consciousness often get confused at this point. They think that because you are alive to the basic All Rightness of the universe, you shouldn’t be upset by the terrorist attack. Just the opposite! Because you are grounded in the unshakeable security of the perfect All Rightness of the world, you can afford to get totally, absolutely, crushingly upset.”
“You won’t weep for the victims, you won’t weep for yourself, you will weep for all humanity, it all comes pouring through you with a pain and intensity that will melt your neurons, blister your skin, tear your eyeballs out of their sockets: you will cry for every single sentient being that ever lived, cry for every lion who lost a cub, for every husband who ever lost a wife, for every mother who ever lost a son, for every loss in every conceivable world–it will hurt with a pain so unbearably raw you will throw yourself flat on the ground and beg God and the Goddess to please, please make it stop.”
“…And you will rage, too, rage the way rage is supposed to be felt when you are no longer afraid of hurting the world, for the world in its basic All Rightness cannot be hurt, and therefore you can afford to feel the rage–feel all of it, feel every rage that has ever been felt: the rage of the father whose daughter is killed, the wrath of the person whose best friend is murdered, the absolute fury of a husband whose wife is raped and whose body abandoned: you are the Soul, the Over-Soul of humanity, and thus you will feel everything humanity has ever felt–and you will let it all in, because you can afford to.
“You are not letting in just the light, just the love, just the caring–those are all dualistic opposites, just as rancid, by themselves, as their mirror images of hatred and evil and rage. No, you are letting it all in, letting the universe itself in, because, in fact… you… are… the… universe–in all its wonderfully mysterious play of light and dark, joy and sorrow, cheers and fears, terror and delight.
“And yet, and yet… at the very same time, you certainly can recognize relative right and wrong–the opposites are united, not obliterated–and therefore you will work as hard as you can to do good, avoid evil, right injustices, heal the sick, shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, curb imperialism, eradicate terrorism. It is just that you will never, never, never again believe that the play of opposites in themselves is anything but a passing nightmare meant to frighten children.”
February 20th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
One simple way one can view the good/evil dilemma:
The basis for all “evil” (which we might define as “purposeful destruction for the sake of self-aggrandizement”) is in fact our human egocentricity.
However, as every authentic mystic throughout history has maintained, the human ego itself is a fiction. We live our lives identified with the idea of a personal ego and its accompanying hopes, desires, and fears.
We live – caught like a fly in a spiders web – caught up in our attachments to this or that. Yet the web is of our own making…..and the ego (within the context that humans hold it, consciously or not) – simply does not exist as a being unto itself.
Mystics, from the Christian, Meister Eckhart to the “Awakened One,” Siddartha Gautama, (“the Buddha”) have left us with a consistent, unified message:
“The One/Void (God/Godhead) is the one and only Absolute Reality.”
There is the One: the All-That-Is.
And, as we clearly perceive, there are also individual differences – mountains, buildings, apples, frogs, planets, fellow humans and the like – have a degree of reality. But this reality is Relative, rather than Absolute.
It’s not exactly that the “parts” of the Whole are unreal. Rather, their entire being only exists as a temporary manifestations of the Whole, much like individual waves on the ocean.
However, in the case of God/the Godhead: the One and Only is only able to manifest at all – through the creation of duality, that is, the emergence of the Two (this and that) from the One.
And as the Tao repeatedly says: from the Primordial Two come “the ten thousand things.”
In our universe at least – most us – “the ten thousand (humans)” have lost our sense of their identity as the One.
The experience of increasing differentiation and individuality is known as the process of Involution.
The process of Evolution (through every phase of the human level of being) is known as “the true spiritual journey,” no matter what path one pursues.
It is nothing less than returning to a sense of our primordial identity as the the Whole, or the ONE, or, if you wish, GOD….
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The following quote speaks to one facet of defining good vs. evil:
“To want control is the pathology! Not that the person can get control, because of course you never do… Man is only a part of larger systems, and the part can never control the whole.”
– Gregory Bateson
Steps to an Ecology of Mind
February 21st, 2010 at 1:01 am
I have suggested that actions we call “good” and those we call “evil” constitute an inevitable polarity emerging from that which is beyond all conception of good vs. evil – the state of Oneness or Non-Duality, colloquially known as “G-D.”
I posit G-D as the ultimate Wholeness…and for us human beans – the fruit of the path toward Wholeness.
Yet, as Wilber has shown this process or “path,” known across traditions as “the spiritual journey,” or spiritual evolution, has many twists, turns, and complexities.
***
As Wilber in his encyclopedic review of developmental paths (both psychological and spiritual) has shown – the experience of “Wholeness” can be “achieved” at a number of discrete developmental levels.
He describes these in terms of “The Great Nest of Being,” such that one can experience wholeness or maturation as a valid culmination of one of any number of deveopmental levels.
The experience of having “ripened” at a given level, however, this does not, however, mean that any form of “ultimate wholeness” has been reached.
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Wilber puts it this way:
“Where states of consciousness are temporary, stages of consciousness are permanent.
“Stages represent the actual milestones of growth and development. Once you are at a stage, it is an enduring acquisition. For example, once a child develops through the linguistic stages of development, the child has permanent access to language. Language isn’t present one minute and gone the next.
“The same thing happens with other types of growth. Once you stably reach a stage of growth and development, you can access the capacities of that stage—such as greater consciousness, more embracing love, higher ethical callings, greater intelligence and awareness—virtually any time you want. Passing states have been converted to permanent traits.
“How many stages of development are there? Well, remember that in any map, the way you divide and represent the actual territory is somewhat arbitrary….It just depends upon how you want to slice that pie.
“The same is true of stages. There are all sorts of ways to slice and dice development, and therefore there are all sorts of stage conceptions. All of them can be useful. In the chakra system, for example, there are 7 major stages or levels of consciousness. Jean Gebser, the famous anthropologist, uses 5: archaic, magic, mythic, rational, and integral. Certain Western psychological models have 8, 12, or more levels of development. Which is right? All of them; it just depends on what you want to keep track of in growth and development.
“’Stages of development’ are also referred to as ‘levels of development,’ the idea being that each stage represents a level of organization or a level of complexity.
“For example, in the sequence from atoms to molecules to cells to organisms, each of those stages of evolution involves a greater level of complexity. The word “level” is not meant in a rigid or exclusionary fashion, but simply to indicate that there are important emergent qualities that tend to come into being in a discrete or quantum-like fashion, and these developmental jumps or levels are important aspects of many natural phenomena.
“Generally, in the Integral Model, we work with around 8 to 10 stages or levels of consciousness development. We have found, after years of field work, that more stages than that are too cumbersome, and less than that, too vague.
“Some of the stage conceptions we often use include those of self development pioneered by Jane Loevinger and Susann Cook-Greuter; Spiral Dynamics, by Don Beck and Chris Cowan; and orders of consciousness, researched by Robert Kegan….”
February 21st, 2010 at 1:06 am
Wilber continues:
“You can be at a higher, transpersonal, or “spiritual” level in several lines, and at a lower, personal, or “psychological” level in others, so that both spiritual and psychological development overlap–and the separate spiritual line(s) can be relatively high or low as well.
“All of these streams and waves are navigated by the self (or the self system), which has to balance all of them and find some sort of harmony in the midst of this melange. Moreover, something can go wrong in any stream at any of its waves (or stages), and therefore we can map various types of pathologies wherever they occur in the psychograph–different types of pathologies occur at different levels or waves in each of the lines.
“Even though we can say, based on massive evidence (clinical, phenomenological, and contemplative), that many of these developmental streams proceed through the waves in a stage-like fashion, nonetheless overall development does not proceed in a specific, stage-like manner, simply because the self is an amalgam of all the various lines, and the possible number of permutations and combinations of those is virtually infinite.
“Finally, because each senior dimension transcends, but includes (or nests) the junior dimension – to be at a higher wave does not mean the lower waves are left behind.
“This is not (and never has been) based on a ladder, but on the model of: atoms, molecules, cells, and organisms, with each senior level enfolding or enveloping the junior–as Plotinus put it, a development that is envelopment. So even at a higher level, “lower” work is still occurring simultaneously–cells still have molecules, Buddhas still have to eat.
…………………………………
“…The Self, or the transpersonal Witness, is not–like the ego or the soul–a “personality,” since it has no specific characteristics whatsoever (it is pure Emptiness and the great Unborn), except for the fact that it is an Emptiness still separate from Form, a Witness still divorced from that which is witnessed.
“As such, the Self or Witness is the seat of attention, the root of the separate-self sense, and the home of the last and subtlest duality, namely, that between the Seer and the seen. It is both the highest Self, and the final barrier, to nondual One Taste.”
February 21st, 2010 at 1:23 am
Since a central theme on NSB is that of Wholeness (as well as “brokenness” – clarification re- the relationship between these two seems in order.
The actual achievement of various levels of Wholeness by a human being is apt to be fraught with complexities; it is an area ripe for confusion and misunderstanding.
And this is to say that what we may consider “Wholeness” may in reality fall far short of the fullness of this state of being….
The converse also follows: to the degree that we view Wholeness through an inadequate or unexamined set of beliefs or assumptions, we will naturally remain unclear about its purported opposite — Evil in the context of Brokenness.
*****
Here, Ram Dass shares an assessment of challenges he has faced at various points while traversing his own spiritual path. Describing a moment of insight about a tendency to confuse various levels of awareness:
“I was busy going from the two into the one – [I told myself that I was ‘going from the two into the one, dual to nondual…*] from multiplicity to unity. All yogic techniques are designed for that purpose: Yoga means union:[but I suddenly I came to the awareness that] “I was using my spiritual journey psychologically in order to [avoid] things I couldn’t acknowledge in myself.”
Along with Wilber, Hendlin has provided a number of specific examples of what might be regarded as “transpersonal pathological syndromes.” Hendlin’s describes a particular state of affairs, which he terms “pernicious oneness.”
For example, he observes that many individuals who feel drawn to grow spiritually exhibit a troubling lack of boundaries. This condition becomes an “undermining force” whereby our desire for a deep sense of connection with self and world fades into mere confusion and misguided action. In these cases an overly simplistic approach to the restoration of human wholeness leads to poor discrimination and a general “over-inclusiveness” in thinking.
Psychologically speaking, such a person has not adequately developed a sense of ego integrity. At the personal, egoic level – their “uncooked seeds” (immature emotional and cognitive patterns) can be reflected in manipulative behavior patterns.
Misunderstanding the need to develop a healthy sense of self, there is often a premature attempt to “disidentify” from one’s own ego, which is perceived as a negative kind of entity. As a result, behavior that is essentially rooted in “pre-personal” motives is incorrectly regarded as “trans-personal” (or deeply collaborative, altruistic or “ego-less”) in nature.
Expressed another way, the “spiritual seeker,” (who is sometimes said to be less than fully “cooked”) can be viewed as operating at a psychologically immature level of thinking and behavior. However, it is not at all uncommon for such a person to rationalize that they have “transcended” a sense of separateness from others and the world.
They may sincerely believe they are moving toward a state of “cosmic” or “unity” consciousness. They may create an entire persona around such a self-image. Meanwhile, beneath what is in actuality more of a facade, the inner needs and drives which they deny, continue to dominate their behavior.
One instance cited by Hendlin is a passive dependent syndrome wherein ego-level goals are dismissed or devalued; healthy assertiveness, and skill/reality-testing behavior may be fearfully shunned. Since all goal-directed behavior is “only more ego game,” a person may gravitate to lifestyle that involves either an extreme laissez-faire, “go-with-the- flow” attitude on one the hand, or an blind obedience to a guru, spiritual leader, or set of scriptures on the other.
February 21st, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Roberto Assagioli, founder of the psychospiritual discipline known as Psychosynthesis:
“In whatever way one may conceive the relationship between the individual self and the universal Self… it is most important to recognize clearly, and to retain ever present in theory and practice, the difference that exists between the Self in its essential nature — that which has been called the Fount,’ the ‘Center,’… the ‘Apex’ of ourselves — and the small ordinary consciousness.
“The disregard of this vital distinction leads to absurd and dangerous consequences.”
February 21st, 2010 at 5:27 pm
I believe that the points David Spangler has emphasized (below) are critical ones when it comes to gaining “right understanding” of the phenomena we are calling “evil.”
*****
David wrote:
“There is another paradox here, for if I call something “evil,” am I not myself breaking a wholeness and thereby fostering evil? If I attack what is evil, am I not doing evil’s work by furthering divisiveness and separation?”
^^^^^^^
I believe this to be a real danger. And, I would say that one of the solutions to this problem resides in the quality of awareness we bring to the task of “calling out evil.” In other words, when less than fully conscious regarding our responses, we can easily be beguiled into ourselves furthering evil, or at least extending the kind of “divisiveness and separation” which leads to further suffering.
David’s statement, I think, captures an essential paradox – which we must, if we are to be truly effective, keep in the forefront of our consciousness.
*****
D.S:
“This is certainly a challenge to be aware of, particularly for someone who follows the way of the Warrior. Our best intentions can sometimes foster the very breaking of wholeness we wish to stop, especially if our attention is only upon conquest and victory. But evil can use the potential confusion of this paradox to diffuse efforts to block its unwholesome ways.”
^^^^^^^
One way to look at this predicament is to think in terms of the seven chakras (or energy centers within the body). To the degree we are still identified with the third chakra (power) we our efforts to confront evil may in fact, add to the problem.
Once we have openned the heart center (chakra four) our efforts are able to be rooted in deep love – even as we do what needs to be done in taking a stand in relation to ego- (or nation-) centric acts which create suffering.
In the case of both Jesus and the Buddha (beings whose self-identity resided in the seventh charkra and beyond) – there is clear evidence that neither of them “held their tongue” when it came to warning others and taking firm and decisive action regarding the demonic.
February 21st, 2010 at 5:31 pm
(con’t)
*****
D.S:
“To call something ‘evil’ is not to say ‘it’s not part of the universe and must be gotten rid of’…
“What we are saying is that here is something that resists and breaks wholeness…
“and the way to deal with it is to prevent it from doing so and then so enfold and include it that it rediscovers the wholeness it has lost.”
^^^^^^^
I would contend that for many, if not most people, to call something “evil” means precisely the opposite of what David is saying. It IS to say: “[This is not a valid] part of the universe and must be gotten rid of.”
What David is suggesting, as I understand it, is that, while there are forces which attempt to resist and break wholeness…the forces are, at a deeper level, part of a Greater Wholeness which transcends and unites the apparent duality of wholeness/evil.
To the degree that we find ourselves unable to deeply accept and understand these forces as essential elements of the universal tropism toward wholeness, we ourselves can be caught in the web of these forces. This occurs by way of unconsciously assuming the validity of the “either/or” mode at the basis of Aristotelian thinking – a kind of thinking which itself undermines Wholeness.
As David suggests – as difficult as it may be – once we do our best to limit and prevent these darker forces from doing their dirty work – what remains is the inescapable necessity of enfolding and including them in the universality of Wholeness – by realizing that this is already the case.
February 21st, 2010 at 5:59 pm
The quest for the lived-experience of unity and wholeness has always been a core element of the human condition. We seek unity through a variety of means: our physical bodies, our families, our religions, our principles, causes, and creative endeavors and our narcissism, to name a few.
Yet, as Woodhouse has observed:
“The [fundamental answer] is in the dissolution of the false ego which seeks unity in everything except its oneness within the Great Chain [of Being] itself.”
March 6th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
Now, viewed through the lens of the following perspective, how should we view “evil?” What relationship do these ideas have to the concept of Wholeness?
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“You used the word Being. Can you explain what you mean by that?
Eckhart Tolle:
“Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence.
“This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don’t seek to grasp it with your mind. Don’t try to understand it.
“You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally.
“To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of “feeling-realization” is enlightenment.”
March 12th, 2010 at 2:43 am
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“Remember this. When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw far from light, the light continues to be bright in itself but they are in darkness. This is also the case when people withdraw from God.”
~Augustine