Author: Bruce Schuman
Date: Saturday, July 12, 2008
Subject: Moving forward
In reply to: 100149

Thanks for your comment, Dave. I was going to come back here today and post something in response to the introductory statement for this workshop, where someone suggests that "the spiritual traditions of the world are converging". That's a fascinating theme -- full of explosive possibilities for interfaith people -- and maybe pointing towards the "interfaith future we are embracing" -- and I will probably get into that....

As regards "integral" -- well, that's a big word for me. Of course, that theme has its own schools of thought -- the California Institute of Integral Studies, etc. -- plus, Ken Wilber has given that language some wide exposure. I have his recent book right here, "The Integral Vision".

Sometimes, I think maybe the right way to see things -- to see everything -- is that all aspects and elements and details of reality and actuality and experience -- all should be, and properly must be -- viewed with an "integral" context -- or to put that in spiritual language -- within the context of The One.

All things come from The One -- all things are held in unity through The One -- and -- maybe -- ?? -- only The One is real -- and any lesser view, or fragmented view -- is, in the Hindu term, "maya" -- or "illusion". We need a politics of The One. We need an integrated science ("the unity of the sciences") anchored in The One. We need an epistemology of The One (all knowledge, divided up as it is, like university departments and "-ologies", can perhaps be shown to emerge from that same underlying Logos -- another interpretation of The One...)

We can see that idea in terms of metaphysics -- and build a big metaphysical theology around that concept. That could be a pretty strong thing, even if we are interested in getting "beyond theology". But this is not only metaphysical -- this concept includes everything -- all aspects of mind and thought and experience. It's not just developing some thesis like "all religions emerge from the One, and are alternative interpretations and expressions of it, emphasizing different aspects of its possibilities." This approach fully includes science as well as spirituality and religion. And it includes politics, and all the psychodynamics of the human social collective and global family....

This makes "integral" a really big word -- pointing towards -- a rather stunning and awesome possibility -- that some of us are sensing on the evolutionary horizon.

There is this cliché -- "connecting the dots" -- but it's a pretty good term.

This is something we need to do -- we, the human community, this "body of believers" that wants to stay alive on this one pretty little planet....

The mystics have been telling us forever -- that everything is interconnected, that everything is connected to everything else. John Donne said it centuries ago: "No man (woman) is an island, entire unto itself.... Do not ask for whom the bell tolls...."

Ken Wilber has put out a spectrum of ideas on "integral"-- integral everything. I think he's on the right track -- and that we are heading for some kind of conceptual integration and synthesis -- that not only brings together "east and west" and "science and religion" and "right brain and left brain" and "analysis and synthesis" -- and "conservative and liberal" -- but places all of this within a single essentially simple framework -- that might turn out to be the conceptual and intellectual foundations for this "great awakening" called for by Dr. James Forbes, Jr.

Interesting that Dr. Forbes' web site is http://healingofthenations.com. Years ago, I built a site on the domain "healingofthenations.org" -- about the indigenous and native peoples. That domain is not working right now, but the site is still up there, at http://interspirit.net/healingofthenations/

- Bruce

---- On Fri, Jul 11, 2008, Dave Kendall wrote ----

Thanks for taking the time to provide such a detailed response to our series, Bruce. The person you've quoted in regard to "another great awakening" is Dr. James Forbes, Jr., senior minister emeritus at Riverside Church in NYC and founder of Healing of the Nations Foundation.

I notice that you've used the term "integral" several times. Is there any particular reason that you've chosen that word?

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