WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY? MEMETICS, QUANTUM MECHANICS,
AND THE SPIRAL OF SPIRITUALITY
By
Caleb Rosado, Ph.D.
Professor of Urban Studies, Director, Urban
Studies Program,
Warner Pacific College, Portland,
Oregon USA
Written August 13, 2000, revised
January 30, 2003
Copyright © 2000, 2003 by Rosado Consulting for Change in Human Systems
Telephone: 503.517.1047, website: http://www.rosado.net, e-mail:
calebrosado@earthlink.net
Most discussion on science and religion tends to focus on
creation and evolution, at least this has been the dominant theme in the media of late.
Yet the subject of creation and evolution is not the only concern in a
discussion of science and religion. Other themes are also present: science and belief in the supernatural, science
and the soul, science and the transformation of consciousness, science and the virgin birth, science and the
resurrection, science and near-deaths experiences,
science and the Bible, science and eschatology, science, faith, reason and
wisdom, science and human Development, etc. All of these themes are part
of a “new convergence” that is emerging in the
dialogue between science and religion. “We are entering the greatest era of science-religion fusion since the Enlightenment
last attempted to reconcile the two, three centuries ago.” So writes Gregg Easterbrook (2002) in the special
December 2002 issue of Wired magazine
devoted to a science and religion. In this paper I want to take up this theme
and focus on the spiral of spiritual
development.
The third millennium will be dominated by the
“religion/spirituality paradox”: the decline
of organized religion on one hand coupled with a growing interest in
spirituality and wisdom on the
other. Because organized religion is perceived by many to be more focused on religious ritual and church trivia then on
spirituality, people are searching for spirituality elsewhere—outside “brand-name” churches and
finding it in religious innovations. This demands a reordering of priorities in terms of the spiritual, and an
urgent need for a relevant faith.
“Relevant” is one of those words that tend toward triteness if not immediately
focused. Thus by relevant I mean a faith that speaks to the current and
future concerns of our time. Among these
are: environmental concerns, poverty, diversity, racial/ethnic conflict,
respect for the Other (whether it be God, nature, individuals or the group),
human awareness and the
transformation of
conscious, and the emergence of a “wisdom society,” as well as a desire for a meaningful,
purposeful existence, to name a few.
One of the crucial problems human beings are
beginning to experience in the 21st century,
and arising out of the information highway and the technological reconstruction
of all aspects of everyday life,
both in business and leisure, is all the cacophony and on-line noise humans are subjected to as a direct by-product of
being technologically wired to a virtual,
imaginational world of
mind-connect and artificial human interactions. Wherever people go they are increasingly finding themselves artificially
connected with others in a non-real world through computer technology
and other forms of media on a 24/7/365 basis. At some point people are going to
want to be alone, away from it all, with all systems turned off. One of the
great needs thus will be for “silence,” for
“dead air,” for “quiet zones,” where people can separate themselves from technology and experience peace,
sanity, tranquility, and rest from all the
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 2
“technoise” of a wired
life. They will also be profoundly driven by a thirst for what is “real,” for what is “genuine.” This thirst in many ways
explains the increasing interest in “reality TV”—
semi-documentary television
programming that purports to portray real life experiences without the artificial “props” of Hollywood make belief.
This thirst for the “quiet” and for genuine connection to what is “real,” raises a couple of important question
regarding the quality of our spiritual
well-being in the 21st century. Will the information highway
have a “rest area”? Will the imaginational world of
information technology, with all its built-in illusions, ever give us an experience
of the real and genuine? The
answer is “yes.” But it will not be found in the digital, holographic world but
in the world of the Spirit—connection with God, the only real entity in an illusory world who can give genuine peace and satisfaction to the
restless and thirsty soul (Rosado 1996).
Statement of Purpose:
This paper seeks to explore a deeper
understanding and definition of spirituality, drawing from a number of disciplines: psychology,
sociology, theology, physics, and the nascent field of memetics. There
are several questions this paper seeks to address. What do we mean by
spirituality? How has scientism resulted in a revival of spiritual interest?
How do emerging frames of analysis help us
to explore a deeper understanding of religion and spirituality that is relevant for a secular/scientific age? How does
the new physics of quantum reality broaden our understanding of spirituality?
The theoretical
framework that I will be employing in this paper is the convergence of
various theories—the
theory of levels of existence also known as Spiral Dynamics, the fledging field
of memetics, and the new physics of quantum mechanics, plus insights from
integral psychology and sociology. All these
approaches will be integrated through a biblical schema that will
hopefully result in a new approach to understanding spirituality and religion
and their various modes of expression as humans seek to improve their quality
of life in the Third Millennium.
But first a discussion on scientism and
alienation.
The Bankruptcy of Our
Age—Human Alienation:
The reality of human
alienation and estrangement from all life-forms and spiritual experience is a most evident social fact in our
day. This reality is not a sudden phenomenon but one that has been gradually growing throughout human history.
Philosopher Ken Wilber (1998, 2000)
gives a detailed and insightful account of the process whereby scientific
materialism became the proverbial camel that took over the spiritual
tent and prevalent worldview of modernity.
From premodern times virtually all of the world's religious traditions have
believed in the Great Nest of Being,
the perennial philosophy of human existence (see graphic).
Each level or dimension envelopes the earlier
dimension in what Wilber calls a “transcend
and include” mode so that each higher level includes the lower level but adds
new
elements
not found in the previous one (Wilber 1998:9). The model is one of “holons”—a
whole that is part of other wholes—”in a holarchy like
atoms/molecules/cells/organisms, with each senior
enfolding its junior” (Wilber 2000:12). This is the significance of the
A+B+C.... For each level there is a corresponding branch of knowledge relating
to it. Thus, physics studies matter, biology
studies life, psychology the mind, theology the soul in relation to God, and
mysticism incorporates all in a
oneness of body-mind-spirit to the Divine.
What is spirituality? Memetics, quantum
mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 3
Figure 1. The Great Next of Being
When the shift in perspectives from traditional society
to modernity occurred, as a result of
the Industrial Revolution, a theological worldview gave way to a scientific way
of seeing the world. Science proceeded to collapse the Great Nest, replacing it
with a flatland
perspective—a one dimension fits all that
Edwin Abbott talked about in his 1884 classic, Flatland:
A Romance in Multiple Dimensions.
Here only one dimension mattered—matter—resulting in a material understanding
of the universe dominated by scientism:
“the belief that there is no reality save that revealed by science, and no
truth save that which science delivers” (Wilber 1998:10,56). Matters
of theology and the spirit were relegated to “illusion” (Freud, the father of
psychology), “fictitiousness” (Comte, the
father of sociology), and “ideology” (Marx, the father of ill-fated communism).
Wilber brings out the incredibleness of this process.
The
bleakness of the modern scientific proclamation is chilling. In that
extraordinary journey from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, scientific
materialism halted the journey at the very first stage,
and proclaimed all subsequent developments to be nothing but arrangements of
frisky dirt. Why this dirt would get right up and eventually start writing poetry was not explained. Or rather, it
was explained by dumb chance and dumb selection,
as if two dumbs would make a Shakespeare.... The only word that can adequately define this cultural catastrophe is
“horrifying” (Wilber 2000:55,56).
Sociologist
Albert Bergesen (1995) suggests a parallel but not as complete conceptual scheme
of human alienation that can be identified in the historical process of human
experience. Bergesen says that humankind has
gone through “three stages of alienation”—alienation from the
divine, alienation from the human, and alienation from nature. These various
forms of
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 4
alienation
represent a break from a basic progressive understanding of who human beings
are: religious, human, and natural or ecological
beings.
The original, oldest, and fundamental alienation
is from God and emerges in a primal or “Edenic” beginning as a break with the
divine, an estrangement from the world of the sacred. Various cultures and religions have different ways
of picturing this estrangement from the divine. The biblical description of the “Fall” is perhaps the best
known, but certainly not the only depiction
of human alienation from the gods. This manner of describing human experience
as estranged and separated from God
pervaded human understanding until the 14th century when the Age of
Renaissance emerged. Up until this time theology was the queen of the sciences,
and the prevalent worldview had a
predominant religious framework. Meaning was centered in the world of
the sacred, and priests, shamans and goddesses ruled and occupied principal
positions of power in society.
From the 16th to the 20th century, with global
expansionism and the emergence of scientific materialism, the focus
shifted from God as the center of the cosmos to humankind as the locus of the center of meaning. Alienation
took on another form as separation from ourselves, our work, and our fellow
human beings. This was also a period of extreme forms of inhumanity, often
supported, blessed, and led in the name of religion. Fueled by an insatiable
greed and an excessive quest for
materialism, this period saw the rise of European expansionism, the imposition of slavery, genocidal acts on
indigenous populations and the reordering of the world into the haves, the hads, and the have-nots. But
such thirst for self-aggrandizement at the core of scientism with its
secular humanism already had within it the destructive seeds of the third alienation—separation from nature or ecological
alienation.
Beginning in
the 19th century the forces of human greed have marched steadily forward in an endless wave of environmental destruction,
with little thought for the future of our planetary home. The result is that in the latter part of the 20th
century postmodernism emerged with a
new awareness of estrangement, an alienation from the natural world and from
our “ecological” selves—the
interconnectedness and interdependence of humans with nature (Capra 1996). In a counter move, “deep ecology” arose as
a fundamental way of viewing our natural
environment at the
center of our existence and human beings as “eco-beings” by asking the basic “why”
questions of life. Why are we here? Why do we believe that our present
direction is the most beneficial to all
life-forms? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Do we have a moral responsibility for the survival, care, and
well-being of our natural environment? Where are we environmentally
headed with our present understanding of human progress? Is this all we have or
is there more to come?
The
cumulative result of these three forms of alienation has been spiritual
disintegration. This is a disconnected, fragmented social self without a sense
of meaning and purpose to life, destitute of a connection to
God, to ourselves, to other humans, as well as to nature. There is a natural
flow to all these forms of alienation: first separation from God, then
separation from ourselves and from one another, and finally separation from our
natural environment and the various life-forms with which we
share this planet. Bergesen suggests that each form of alienation
accuses the previous way of viewing reality with a false consciousness, with
being a myth and the source of pain and
suffering. Scientific materialism, in breaking away from religion,
charged God and religion as the source of evil in the world, since most warfare
has had a religious undergirding. Deep ecology and an
ecofeminism is now doing the same to scientism—especially
in its capitalistic and patriarchal forms—as destroying human life, exploiting
women, and annihilating the ecosystem.
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 5
But is deep ecology—the movement espousing the
interconnectedness of all life-forms— the
final solution to the problems of human alienation? Albert Bergesen and other
deep ecologists such as Fritjof Capra (1982, 1996) seem
to suggest as much, by viewing these various forms
of alienation in a linear mode: estrangement from God to humankind to
ecological. Capra, along with other New Age
scientists, is seeking for the solution in an Eastern cyclical worldview.
Yet, the reality that is emerging in the human social experience suggests
otherwise.
What is emerging now
is not a linear pattern of development, the dominant view of the West, nor a
circular pattern, the dominant view of the East, but a spiral process
different from the other two and in harmony
with the biblical view. It has another stage in the process—the spiritual—a return
to the beginning. Let me explain. The Biblical model is one of pristine life in
the Garden of Eden in the first two chapters
of Genesis. In the third chapter sin enters world. In the last two chapters of
the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, the Bible ends with a
return to this pristine world in the
New Earth. In the third chapter from the end, Revelation 20, sin comes to an end. Between the fourth chapter of Genesis and the
fourth chapter from the end of Revelation the whole of “salvation
history” unfolds, culminating with the cross of Christ as the apex. Thus
eschatology (the study of the last things) is a return to protology (the first
things), with one exception. It is not a
simple cycle returning one to the beginning as in a closed circle or a spinning prayer wheel. Rather, it is an ascending
spiral that moves one to another
level of existence, one with God
making His dwelling in the midst of humankind (Revelation 21:3). Thus, the biblical model of history is neither
linear (Western) nor cyclical (Eastern), but spiral,
as in the quantum world where light is both a particle
and a wave. John Edser is therefore correct:
“Life is not a cycle, it's a spiral, with quantum steps.”1 Developmental psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi said as much when he
suggested that the process of human development
“is not a circular motion that returns to where one started, but rather, it
resembles an ascending spiral” (1993).
Within this understanding history is not a lemming-like
march toward oblivion, but a perennial spiritual process
seeking a return to the Garden and a reconnection of humanity with God. Ever since our
primeval parents were expelled from the Garden of Eden, human beings have been by one means or another, seeking to get
back to the Garden. Human expressions of religion and their diversity of
beliefs are all various forms and means of human beings seeking to get “back to
Eden.” The many religious expressions throughout history are simply the diverse
means human beings have devised to
understand this connectedness to the divine. What human beings are now discovering, acknowledging, and
experiencing is that we are not merely religious or human or ecological beings. We are spiritual
beings, experiencing a fourth alienation— alienation
from spirit. And
we are at odds with the divine, with our self, with each other and with nature, because our
human spirit has lost its moorings from the Divine Spirit, from God, the source of our being, existence, and
interconnectedness. The result has been a progressive alienation from everything else. All four forms of
alienation—from God, from ourselves, from humans, from nature—are in their essence and at heart a
spiritual estrangement—a separation of the
human spirit from the Great Spirit. When
such separation takes place it is easy to see how human thinking has
evolved from connectedness to alienation—from God as the creator of life, to humans as the creator of God, to nature being
God, to humans being god.
Our Table of Life:
In
order to understand this spiritual estrangement we need to recognize that there
are four dimensions or components to
human well-being: the bio, the psycho, the social, the spiritual.
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 6
Any semblance of a healthy human life needs these four
dimensions in an operative condition. By
this I don’t necessarily mean perfectly sound, for who of us is perfectly whole
in any one of these dimensions, but
at least functional. The bio or physical is the area of the body, our physical well-being; the psycho, the mental is concerned with the soul—the integrative whole of our mind, will,
and emotions. The social deals with our voice, the means to sustain social
relations with others, since without a voice
we do not socially exist; and the spiritual, which focuses on the spirit, the center of intimacy, meaning, purpose, and
the contemplative life.
The interrelationship of these
four dimensions can best be illustrated with a table.
Figure 2. The Four Dimensions of Our
Table of Life
Our Table of Life is
in balance when all four dimensions are developed in a harmonious
or proportionate manner. When the table is
balanced it can withstand a great deal of pressure and stress, as when weight is put on the table. A
table that is not balanced may collapse or give way under pressure. A
table can appear to be balanced, however, even if one leg is short. For all practical purposes it may look balanced, since
this type of imbalance is not easily detected until pressure is put on the
table. It is then that the lack of balance is recognized, and whatever is on it
spills. The same can be seen in human
relations. Some people look reliable and dependable, but when pressure is
placed on them, when one attempts to depend on them, or they undergo stress, they
prove to be untrustworthy, undependable and cannot be counted on when needed
the most. For most people,
especially young people, the one leg that is usually short, or the one
dimension that receives minimal
attention is the spiritual.
A table can also be unbalanced if a leg is too long.
This type of imbalance is more easily
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 7
detected,
since it tends to stand out. We tend to have special names when there is an
unbalance in each of the dimensions at the
expense of the others. People with too long of a physical leg are often
called “jocks” or “babes.” If the social is too long, they are called “party
animals,” “social butterflies.” If it is the mental
leg, they are called “geeks,” “nerds.” And if the spiritual leg is the
longer one, they are called “religious fanatics,” “spiritual freaks.”
While
all four dimensions are important for a balanced life, the most important of
the
four is the spiritual dimension. This is the one
that gives purpose and meaning—the why behind the what—to the other dimensions. If one of the other dimensions
undergoes transformation or sudden
change, it is the spiritual dimension as the anchor leg that provides the
much-needed sense of well-being,
purpose, and significance. Thus, if an accident leaves a person paralyzed, damaging
not only the physical, but also the social and emotional dimensions of life, it
is the spiritual entity that addresses the
“why” questions behind the quest for meaning and purpose to life. Here lies the difference between science and
religion. The function of science is to give us knowledge. The function of religion is to give us wisdom. Wisdom has to do with values. Knowledge has to do with facts.
Science answers the why-questions of life in terms of causality—what happened? Religion answers them in terms of
values
and ultimate meaning— why did it happen? And as
Friedrich Nietzsche said, “If a person has a why to live, he can handle almost any what!”
The concern today with the recovery of the spiritual as
the fourth dimension of life is an effort—jaded
as it may be in its many and diverse expressions—to reconnect us once again
with God, alienation from whom results in all other
forms of alienation. This desire for reconnectedness
with God, however, is one cognizant of all the other forms of alienation, which
have resulted in exploitation of both the human and
natural environments. What we are seeing emerge
today is a holistic form of spirituality which not only seeks to connect humans
once again to God, but also to self, to other humans and to the
natural/ecological world, our environmental
home, of which we are all responsible caretakers. The result is a coming full circle, back to the future, in a spiral of human
development. How did this recent concern for the spiritual emerge?
The
Rise of Spirituality:
With
the rise of the Renaissance in the 14th century, a God-center
worldview slowly began giving way to a
human-centered one and a humanistic way of life. By the 20th
century, following the restructuring of
world society after World War II, humanism had become
prominent. With the
splitting of the atom, humanistic materialism and naturalism in science took center
stage as the great savior of humankind. After all, it was the deployment of the
best of scientific research—nuclear
fission—which brought an end to the war. With the launching of Sputnik and the race towards the moon, science was
now seen as the solution to human problems.
Interest in religion appeared to wane. In the 1960s, with the rise of
secularism as a way of life devoid
of God, sociologists began to predict the demise of religion as a soon-to-beforgotten footnote of history. Liberal theologians
and secular humanists proclaimed the “death of God.” Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s Americans rushed headlong toward
materialism and greed, including the continued destruction of the
environment. This movement of secular materialism was most visible during the Reagan administration and modeled by his
“trickle down” economic policies.
Voices
of concern from various parts of the world, however, were already raising a cry
of warning above the din of materialism coming from
the moneychangers in the temple of
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 8
capitalism. The
prophetic voices of liberation theologians, feminists, environmentalists, the
poor and disenfranchised, began
calling people back from the brink of a mechanical, fragmented, isolationist, dehumanizing, disconnected view of
the world, a by-product of the industrial society. This was due to the realization that western scientism was no
different than the historical materialism
of communism, in terms of alienating the human spirit. Both worldviews left
people spiritually bankrupt and
disconnected from each other, from their natural environment, as well as from
self.
In the late 1980s and 1990s people began to turn to
spirituality and a return to nature as Green movements became popular. Now in
the 21st century, a holistic
spirituality has emerged with a global awareness for human
connectedness to the divine and communalism, and a realization of our
interdependence with the ecosystem. This sense of connectedness, interdependence, and need for communalism is not
just between human beings, but also with all natural life-forms, within a paradigm which reminds us that we are all
one with the earth. This global
awareness of the commonality of humanity was made possible in part by two
factors. First, an advanced
technology that has turned our world into a telecommunications electronic village, where each instantly knows what is
happening to the other. Second, the realization that scientific materialism, instead of being a savior
to solve human problems, is in large measure responsible for the destructive dualisms that fragment the human spirit
and leave us alienated from the ecological and eternal Other. A new
paradigm or way of perceiving our world has emerged
as a “global consciousness” focused on the interconnectedness of all
life-forms, both human and environmental.
This holistic—and very biblical—view of life has a profound spiritual undergirding. Unfortunately, the deeper
implications of this worldview to a global village concerned with the
impending threat of human/ecological destruction is only beginning to be explored. It now appears that the most
challenging discipline of the sciences, Quantum Physics, may be leading the field in exploring the spiritual dimensions
of the universe, preparing us for a
“quantum leap” forward. This is largely due to a sense of awe, respect, and
wonder now being generated through
scientific discoveries about the universe, at both the microscopic and cosmological
dimensions.
The New Physics and
Spirituality:
Quantum
mechanics (QM), the most challenging and mentally engaging form of the
sciences, has given rise to a whole new understanding of reality. Focused on
the subatomic world of energy, electronic particles, and light,
quantum physics is forcing scientists and knowledgeable laypersons alike, to
see the world anew—radically anew. But it also is giving rise to a whole new understanding of faith, as
much of the subatomic world is non-observable and
based only on
effects. Classical Newtonian physics with its mechanical orientation regarded
light as either particles or later
waves, but not both. Under QM light is both particles and a wave, an apparent
impossibility, yet true and measurable, depending on the conditions of
observation, though not always explainable
especially as regards its philosophical implications.
This article in no way will delve deeply into this
mysterious, “spooky” world, as Einstein
called it, as the literature on
the subject is vast and quite complicated. There are, however, some implications
to spirituality. Several physicists and scientists have written about the
ramifications of quantum cosmology, and the
implications of the new physics (the converging of QM with the general
theory of relativity) for the spiritual dimension (Davies 1983, 1992; Tippler
1994; Lazich 1989, 2000; Pearcey and Thaxton 1994; Wright 1993;
Clausen 1991, 2000). There are several derived
insights from this exciting field of study that will broaden our understanding
of
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 9
spirituality.
Quantum Principles:
All reality is
interrelated.
Diarmuid O'Murchu (1998:66) declares: “At the heart of the
quantum vision is the conviction that all life forces are interdependent and
interrelated. In fact, we experience life, not in isolated entities, not in separate units, but in bundles of
experience (quanta).” German physicist Werner Heisenberg (O'Murchu 1998:78)
first voiced the idea that our world is essentially an “interconnected
web of relationships.” This is a most important principle for interhuman
relations in a socially alienated and spiritually fragmented world. QM, by
focusing on the small-size world, enables
us to understand the essential elements and components that comprise life at the primary levels of existence.
And from these basic levels on up, the basic modus
operandi of the
universe—interconnectedness and interrelatedness—emerges which governs
life in our universe. Life is the result of nondual relationships, interlinked,
interconnected, and interdependent. Unfortunately, with
the collapse of the Great Nest of Being, the
scientific humanism that brought this about also gave rise to a reality of
alienation and isolation, with an independent,
autonomous and separate existence, away from interrelationships.
Max
Planck, the father of QM who coined the term quanta for the discrete
bundles of energy that comprise light, made an insightful statement at the
heart of this principle of interrelatedness.
“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And it is because, in the
last analysis, we ourselves are part
of the mystery we are trying to solve” (O'Murchu 1998:78). Danah Zohar
(1990:206) makes clear that the particle world is essentially “particles in relationships.” All this is important for
spirituality, for ultimately spirituality is about relationships—God to human,
human to human, human to nature, human to cosmic reality. This is point that Katherine Zappone (1991) makes. “The
pivotal shift in spirituality's meaning for the twentieth century resides in the birth of a worldview of
interdependence or relationality. In its broadest sense, spirituality is the relational component of lived
experience.” Even the traditional Christian
Doctrine of the Trinity models this principle of interrelated oneness. For too
long a mechanistic paradigm has
dominated an understanding of this doctrine, where people end up trying, as in “jigsaw puzzle”, to fit 3 into 1.
But from a holistic QM framework, this doesn't make much sense. Thus, O'Murchu suggests that “the doctrine of the Trinity
is an attempted expression of the
fact that the essential nature of God is about relatedness and the capacity to relate, that the propensity and power to relate
is, in fact, the very essence of God...God becomes meaningful in the
very process of relating” (82). This gives rise to the second principle.
Quantum
holism—the world is a seamless, indivisible whole.
The famous experiment
by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, now known as the EPR Experiment, suggested that two particles of light
instantaneously influence each other, even at great distances, in an equal and
opposite manner. Here is the strange or “spooky action at a distance” nature of this experiment, as Einstein
regarded it (Horgan 1992), for the influence
takes place faster than the speed of light. And since no
information is known about the two parts of
the widely separated system, until one part is observed, then influence on the
other part is also immediately determined (faster
than the speed of light), because it is part of a holistic system. As
Pearcey and Thaxton (1994:204) declare, “The two
electrons seem to be bound together by some mysterious
unity.” American born physicist David Bohm suggests that the two parts are not
What is spirituality? Memetics, quantum
mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 10
really two separate
parts, but represent an “unbroken wholeness,” which affirms the “interconnectedness of the whole universe”
(Pearcey and Thaxton 1994:204). This is a quantum nonlocality of holistic interconnectedness that
transcends the binary separateness of localistic, Newtonian physics.
This sense of holism and mystical union appears
to be what Jesus had in mind when he prayed
in the Garden of Gethsemane prior to going to the cross. “The glory that you
have given me I have given them so that they may be one, as we are one, I in
them and you in me, that they may
become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and
have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:22,23 NRSV).
New Age physicists, Fritjof Capra (1991) and Gary
Zukav (1979), regard this understanding
as the dominant thinking of Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism).
They, therefore, view oriental religions as being more compatible with the
atomic physics than Christianity.
And to an extent, they are right. But what they fail to realize is that the
Bible is an Eastern book, written from an Eastern frame of understanding,
and not the Western one to which it
has been made captive. Once one recognizes this fact, it is very easy to see
how biblical Christianity has a smooth connection with the New Physics,
especially in view of the above statement
on “mystic oneness” made by Jesus Christ. Few Eastern thinkers have made as
bold a statement as Jesus made. It is the ultimate expression of
mystical union with God. The result is that “Christianity is a deeply mystical
religion,” declares Ursula King in her book Christian Mystics:
The Spiritual Heart of the Christian Tradition (1998:10). “At its heart is Jesus’s own
experience,” she continues, “expressed as ‘I and the Father are one,’ the
message of utter divine unity” (King 1998:10). King gives the following
definition of a “mystic.”
A mystic is a person who is deeply aware of the powerful
presence of the divine Spirit: someone who seeks, above
all, the knowledge and love of God, and who experiences
to an extraordinary degree the profoundly personal encounter with the energy
of divine life. Mystics often perceive the presence of God throughout the world
of nature and in all that is alive, leading to a
transfiguration of the ordinary all around them. However,
the touch of God is most strongly felt deep within their own hearts (6).
What makes it difficult for most people to
understand mysticism and a mystical relationship
with the Divine and with each other is that our worldview is still dominated by
Newtonian physics with its
mechanical, binary, independent, and segregated understanding of reality. In
such a worldview, the body, mind, soul, spirit, and even social dimensions are
distinct and separate. Any kind of union is by close proximity, but never a
crossing of boundaries where two
become one, not in a manner where each ceases to exist, but as a third and
experiential entity. The best way to illustrate this is with music,
because music is one of the few elements in the
Newtonian world that serves as a bridge to the Integrated or holistic world, the
new world of Being, the 2nd Tier dimension of Spiral Dynamics, which will be
introduced shortly.
It is a simple
illustration but a most powerful one. In a piano one has both the black keys and the white keys. Each makes its own sounds separately.
But when played together, their chordal
union makes “harmony,” a third and distinct creation and entity that exists
only when the segregated elements
come together to form a holistic, mystical union. This is what best explains mysticism—it is a holistic, integrated union of
body, mind, soul, spirit, within a social context of community, where two or more entities (the divine
and the human, the cosmic and the earthly, or even human with human), experience a spiritual union, an energy-filled
connection, that can best
What is spirituality? Memetics, quantum
mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 11
be described as a
holistic “oneness” of nonduality and nonlocality. This union results in “harmony,” the “music of the soul,” a state of
interconnectedness. Externally the bodies are still distinct, but
internally they are experiencing a oneness, an energy field where our mind and body, our soul and spirit are so blended, that
each feels the impulses, energy, and desires of the other.
This then is the
essence of spirituality at its deepest and highest levels of
understanding—it is a mystical, holistic, seamless,
intimate experience of oneness, wholeness, union,
and communion with the Divine, who always remains the Other, distinct from us,
or it can be a union between human beings. Yet the experience of oneness and
unity is such that as in the EPR
Experiment, action in one element influences the behavior of the other element.
This principle is at the heart of
Christianity, where the redemptive action of God resonates in an antiphonal
response from humankind. “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to
love one another... God is love, and those
who abide in love abide in god, and God abides in them” (1 John 4:11, 16 NRSV). Such response
results in a seamless, indivisible whole with the divine. “No one has ever seen God; if we love one
another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (vs. 12).
Such mystical oneness is best expressed in the following statement.
All true obedience comes from the heart. It was heart
work with Christ. And if we consent, He will so identify Himself with our
thoughts and aims, so blend our hearts and minds into conformity
to His will, that when obeying Him we shall be but carrying out our own impulses. The will, refined and
sanctified, will find its highest delight in doing His service. When we
know God, as it is our privilege to know Him, our life will be a life of continual obedience. Through an appreciation of
the character of Christ, through communion with God, sin will become
hateful to us (White 1940:668).
This
is an example of the highest form of spirituality, for it describes a mystical oneness—thoughts, aims, hearts, and minds blended
in oneness with the divine—one seldom seen
our world. Yet it is one that flows from the very One who “created” the
subatomic world where it is modeled
on a continual basis.
Both Eastern religions and Christianity focus on a
“mystical union” with God and the sacredness
of life. Yet there is a profound difference between the two. “...however
intimate this union with God is, Christian mysticism never abandons
the otherness of God, and the mystic never
ceases to be God’s creature” (King 1998:22). Christianity never “deifies” the
individual in this quest for union and communion with God. The human does not
become God, and God does not become
human, except in the person of Christ. The boundaries are still there, while experiencing a harmonic oneness with the Divine,
the God of the Cosmos. There is no final stage of development, but a continual upward spiral of growth and
interconnectedness.
It is for this reason that Frank J. Tipler, not only
regards theology as a “branch of physics,” but also moves away
from atheism to an embracing of Christian theology as true, after examining
all the evidence from QM. Here is his statement (Tipler 1994:ix).
When I began my career as a
cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced
atheist. I never in my wildest
dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting
to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are
straight-forward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these
conclusions by the inexorable logic of my
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 12
own special branch of
physics.
It is interesting that Tipler’s rigorous scientific
research leads him to regard not the enlightenment
of New Age thinking but the enlightenment of Christianity as best aligned with the laws of the new
physics.
The
whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Since life is the product of relationships, “the
quantum world does not operate in terms of cause and effect.” O'Murchu continues, “The whole is not caused by the
fact that all the parts function in
unison. No, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, yet, mysteriously,
the whole is contained in each part
(as in a hologram). Cause and effect make little sense is an world now understood to be fundamentally relational and
interdependent in its essential nature” (66). A novel, for example, is more than paper, ink, glue, words, or correct
sentence structure,
so is the reality QM
creates (Clausen 2000). In the same manner spiritual consciousness is more than the sum total of the various levels of the
Great Nest of Being (Wilber 2000). The whole of spirituality transcends the whole of body, mind, soul, and spirit,
resulting in a mystical experience
of interconnectedness with the divine.
Two
natures, but one entity—an integrated whole.
In classical physics Newton treated light as a
particle. But the discoveries of QM have resulted in what many perceived to be
an anomaly. Light is simultaneously, wave and particle, an apparent paradox.
Yet, this is part of the previous principle where the whole, being greater
than the parts, as in
light being more than particles and waves, results in an entity that is
different from the other two.
This holism in quantum physics helps us to better
understand what to many is the great paradox
of the Christian faith, the dual nature of Christ, as both God and human.
Traditional mechanistic worldviews
have had a problem with this teaching because it tends to be incompatible
with a mechanistic, segregated, independent sense of existence. How could Jesus
be both God and man? Yet, this teaching finds a parallel
in the new physics, making the dual nature
of Christ understandable from this holistic frame of analysis. From a quantum
mechanics perspective, Jesus is fully
“both” God “and” man, just like light is both wave and particle (Begley
1998:51).
Quantum Mechanics also
gives us a whole new understanding of human relations. The mechanical worldview of Newtonian physics also
segregated, compartmentalized, and classified human groups,
differentiating them by visible markers such as class, race, and gender. Within
this worldview it was easy to justify
slavery, the annihilation of indigenous populations, and the oppression of women, and even find divine sanctions
for such action. QM, however, is showing how we are all part of an integrated
whole, distinct but one human family at the same time. We are interdependent,
interconnected, and integrated, such that “there is neither Jew nor Greek,
slave nor free, male or female, but one” human family in the sight of God. This
paradigm shift that Christ brought
to the human race—both/and—unfortunately has not been modeled by the Christian Church or by society, both of which have
been dominated by a Newtonian mechanical view of the world. This binary either/or worldview has been at the
heart of the failure of the Christian
Church in its social practice. The interconnectedness revealed by QM, however,
shows the close alignment between the New Physics and the “new humanity in
Christ” that the Apostle Paul speaks
of in his letter to the Ephesians. It thereby challenges the Christianity,
Islam, and
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 13
other religions, to
shift to a both/and modus operandi of belief and behavior.
From
chaos to self-organization.
Classical physics theory regarded chaos as the
result of randomness, disorder, and instability.
Yet chaos theory is finding order where others have only seen disorder (Gleick
1987). The mandelbrot set discovered
by Mandelbrot, after whom it was named, shows patterns within patterns, where others might just see chaos
(1977).
The research of Ilya Prigogine, a chemist and Nobel
laureate, takes chaos further by focusing on the principle of
“self-organization.” What Prigogine says is that states of chaos are not
end-states in themselves. In reality they are the states of upheaval just prior
to a system undergoing a radical
transformation to a higher level of organization. Natural systems flow from stability
to chaos to a re-ordering to a higher state of self-organization; it is the way
of nature. Thus, systems tend to seek
self-organization, moving from one level to a higher level of development (Prigogine 1980; Prigogine and Stenger
1984; Wright 1993). Prigogine and Stenger view chaos as a precondition
stage prior to the activation of the self-organizing process inherent in all
living systems.
This quantum
insight has spiritual implications for human development. The human state of
alienation from a Chaos Theory perspective is in actuality a “precondition
stage” preceding the next stage of
self-organization. In the sociological theory of religion, it would be the
state of moral and social disorder
before a person experiences a need for a new order or “conversion.” Psychologically
it would be a state of cognitive dissonance prior to experiencing consonance between belief and behaviour. Prigogine's point,
however, is that life reorganizes itself. While that might be true for some life forms and from an evolutionary
developmental perspective, the re-organizing of the spiritual life for human
beings, from a biblical perspective, is more the work of the Holy Spirit (1
Corinthians 12:3) than of human of evolutionary self-reformation.
A “Momentous Leap”
This
brief discussion of quantum mechanics and spirituality pushes the paradigm of
our understanding of spirituality to a whole new
dimension of consciousness, existence, and relatedness
beyond the way humans normally experience spirituality within a mechanical worldview.
Quantum mechanics is pushing the envelope of human consciousness to a whole new
level
of spiritual thinking. A growing body of scientists, philosophers, historians,
behavioral scientists, and spiritual
leaders (from Howard Bloom, Ken Wilber, Barbara Hubbard, Don Beck, Chris
Cowan, Robert Kegan, Robert Wright, Melinda Davis, to Andrew Cohen, to mention
a few) are now recognizing the development
of a whole new way of seeing the world. It is a major shift in human thinking and of consciousness
development, brought about in part by an accelerated movement into the “imaginational world,” which will alter
human living as we know it. Beginning
with the late Dr. Clare W. Graves, who in 1974 predicted "a momentous
leap" in human development (see The Futurist, April 1974), these and
many others scholars are now recognizing
what Graves, perhaps the first, recognized back in the late 1960s, that we are
on the verge of a radical, seismic shift in human development, from
"subsistence" levels of thinking focused on human survival and
existence, to "being" levels focused on human integration and global
community. It is a shift from a materialistic to a spiritualistic environment;
from a dogmatic/scientific oriented world
to one focused on spiritual discovery and fulfillment, not just for oneself but also for the planet as a whole. To
put it simply, it is Integrative thinking and living knocking and opening the door of Holistic thinking and action,
in order to enter the
What is spirituality? Memetics, quantum
mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 14
emerging
world of Wisdom living and experience.
Rodney Stark and Roger Finke (2000) have captured
sociologically this trend shift,
where religion was once predicted to be a "footnote of
history" (the position of sociologists in
the 1960s) to one where the demise of
secularization has become a reality. A hunger for meaning in the midst of human chaos as well as the need
for a radical transformation in people’s lives (the two functions of religion)
has now emerged. Stark and Finke, however, have not grasped the fact that this
shift is part of a much larger, momentous transformation—a quantum leap—taking
place in human
existence.
Obviously, it is not taking place in all places on
earth with the same strength. Most segments
of the world are caught up in survival modes of living, tribal warfare of
various sorts, or “holy wars” for
religio-political dominance. However, in other segments of our global village there
is an awakening for the spiritual taking place the likes of which have not been
seen in history, and we are just beginning
to see the early shallow waves hit the shore of human existence. Soon a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual
tsunami will hit with such gale force unlike anything previously experienced.
We need to now catch the dynamic waves of millennial change, for if we are not part of the future, we
will be history!
These stages
of self-organization, development, and transformation lead us into the field of Spiral Dynamics, the theory of levels of
existence and memetics, the principal framework for best understanding spirituality in its many
dimensions. And it has to do with culture and value systems.
Value
Systems as Cultural Currents: 2
Don Beck
brings out the point that culture is not a single point of view, with a uniform
set of beliefs. Culture is more like an archeological dig, consisting of many
layers, strata, or levels, each with a different worldview, bottom-line,
perceptions of right and wrong, belief systems,
and understanding of the world. These “beliefs” or “Value System” are also
v-Memes or ValueMemes (pronounced
vee-meem). The word “meme” was coined by English biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The
Selfish Gene, to represent a
unit of cultural information that
impacts human development. In the same manner that genes shape our biological
makeup, memes give form to our cultural and social formation. Both carry
coded information that reproduce their
instructions in the bodies and minds that serve as hosts. Genes are transmited through chemical systems and biological tissue in
human bodies; memes spread their messages like viruses, through word-of-mouth, printed and electronic media, and
cyberspace—using the human mind as a
host. Beck and Cowan (1996) differentiate between memes as surface ideas, beliefs,
and actions, and v-Memes as the Value Systems, the worldviews, and mindsets
from which the “little memes” emerge.
An analogy with computers may help explain the
relationship between genes, memes, and
v-Memes or value systems. Computers consist of three constituent parts: the
hardware, the
software, and the operating
system. The “hardware”—the computer—is comparable to the genes, the
biological code carriers in DNA, inherited from our parents. But the hardware
by itself is not functional until the “software,”
the programs, is installed. This is equivalent to the memes, the “cultural
DNA”—the ideas, values, beliefs, and behaviours gained from parents, culture, religion,
and society. What makes the programs run is the “operating system,” whether it
is WindowsX
or Mac OS. This is similar to v-Memes, the deep-level Value Systems, paradigms,
worldviews, belief structures, levels of
bio-psycho-social-spiritual existence that “run” the “software”
or “mindware” from which surface memes emerge. These v-Memes (or vMEMES
as
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 15
it is sometimes written) result
from our responses to Life Conditions, the real change agents. Periodically
our computers have to undergo a systems “upgrade” as our needs change. In the same
manner one experiences a “mental upgrade” when one moves from one v-Meme level
to another, as our Coping Systems adjust to new
Problems of Existence.
Value
Systems are like super-memes. Once a new Value System is awakened in culture
or in the collective
life of a group, it will spread its instructional codes and life priority
messages throughout that culture’s or
group’s surface-level of living. It impacts beliefs, economic, political, and spiritual arrangements,
psychological and sociological theories of living, styles of worship, forms of musical expression, views of
human nature, our future destiny, and ways of expressing one’s humanity. It doesn’t just impact what people think and believe; it also alters the
way they
think and set priorities. A shift in v-Memes is a shift in Value Systems and
way of seeing the world. These
life-altering beliefs or Value Systems shape surface-level thoughts, beliefs, and actions. They explain why things
happen and to whom. They assign life’s priorities. They determine who is and who is not a “true
believer,” define group boundaries, shape racist or inclusive thinking and behaviour, and write the
scripts for future scenarios (Rosado 1999b).
The majority of all
attempts at group reconciliation, conflict resolution, motivational training, workshops on leadership, diversity
training, and seminars on spiritual growth focus on these surface differences rather than on the deep
operating value/beliefs systems within. Values Systems are complex Coping
Systems—decision-making motivators and ways of thinking—that emerge in response to Problems of Existence.
There are 6 billion people in the world today, and though we all come
from some 30,000 genes—ALL of us—we share only a few basic Value Systems. Eight have emerged thus far (see table),
as a result of bio-psycho-social-spiritual research, which impact human
behavior, shape culture, and give structure to belief systems (Graves 1974;
Beck and Cowan 1996; Roemischer 2002).
Figure
3. The Spiral-Like Strata of Human Value System Cultural Codes
A
color scheme best identifies in a simple way the outward and inward
transformations taking place as individuals and
groups mature from birth to adulthood. The significance of the colors
is only to identify the respective systems and has no symbolism beyond that.
Notice how the Focus alternates between dominance of ME-oriented Express-the-self (warm colors) and WE-oriented Sacrifice-the-self
(cool colors) life focus. Note also the differences in what is valued
in each system as they flow from survival (Beige), to safety and security
(Purple), to raw power and instant gratification
(Red), to purpose in life (Blue), to strategies for success (Orange), to community
awareness (Green), to alternative forms (Yellow), to global village
What is spirituality? Memetics, quantum
mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 16
(Turquoise). At each
level there is a different Lifestyle, from living for survival to living for wisdom. The levels are open-ended, there is no
final stage of development, as the ideal that set before us is “higher
than the highest human thought can reach” (White 1952:18). The lower levels,
however, have no understanding of what the higher levels consider to be of
importance. The higher levels, on the other
hand, tend to lose contact with the operating principles that make sense to the lower levels and will often regard
these operational values to be of lesser value to the overall good of
society.
Here’s the essence of the idea. Not only different
nations, societies, cultures, and subcultures, but also different groups
and entities within an organization as well as individuals are at different levels of psycho-social-spiritual
emergence as displayed within these evolving levels of complexity. What moves one from one level to the next is a
change in one’s Life Conditions (as
these are impacted by Time, Place, Problems, Circumstances, and Capabilities), coupled with an awakening of our Mental Capacities
(our neurological system in the brain) that respond to these changes.
Life conditions outside interact with latent thinking capacities inside the
mind to awaken the next v-Meme level. It is an ever increasing and widening
spiral of development as people move through
the various levels of bio-psycho-social-spiritual complexity. Every time people move from one level
to the next, they undergo a major paradigm shift, a different window through
which to look out on the world, a transformation of their basic value system.
This is a key aspect of what makes each level different, for the complexity of
the thinking must match or exceed the complexity of the problems of
existence. Yet, and here is a critical
concept, the previously awakened levels do not disappear. Rather, they stay
active within the value system
stacks, thus impacting the nature and content of the more complex systems. A person
can be at more than one memetic level in different areas of their life, even
though one value system dominates their outlook. Thus, for a given person his
or her overarching v-Meme may be a
conservative Blue, especially in terms of religion and the church, in relation
to the family it may be Purple
(tradition-driven), at work it may be Orange (success-driven), in sports it may
be Red (power-driven), and in relation to others it may be Green
(people-driven), but the basic paradigm and
way of seeing the world is still Blue (order-driven).
These eight v-Meme codes or value systems serve
as cultural magnets around which our “stuff”
clusters and our life is aligned. When something is not right at the surface
level—the level where we express
ourselves in relation to others including God—or when our priorities are distorted or our lives are out of balance, we
need to carefully examine what is happening below the surface in these deep psycho-social-spiritual
currents. These determine how people think and respond to the world around them and not just what they say or do. Strain between these systems is
the home of all human conflict, understanding, and mis-understanding. These
v-Memes
are the sum total of the invisible, cultural, and spiritual forces that drive
our perceptions, influence all of life’s choices,
lifestyles, and sense of what is right, wrong, and appropriate.
What
cause a memetic shift in one's life is when old explanations and experiences no
longer adequately explain one’s emerging reality as a
result of changes in one’s Life Conditions (determined
by time, place, problems, circumstances, and capabilities), which now exceed
the parameters of one’s present worldview. These
levels are “systems-in” people, not permanent “personality
types.” And like Russian Matroshka Dolls that also are “systems within
systems,” when one’s cup overflows one
then moves to the larger, more encompassing system. Previous value
systems, however, do not go away; they just shift down the spiral. And, if
changing Life Conditions warrant, we may return
to these previous systems. When disaster strikes, for
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 17
example, we may be reduced to Beige. But then as life
normalizes, we gradually return our previous
level of existence or shift to a new level depending on the traumatic
experience and its impact on our
psyche. It is this interaction between our “real life” experiences and our mind/brain
capacities that cause these value systems to awaken, ebb, and flow. Without our
latent mental capacities, the world
outside has nothing to trigger
(the situation of the mentally impaired
such as those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease). Without the stimuli from
outside, systems within may not have cause to be awakened (the case of the Amish and persons
living in “closed” communities).
Thus, both
nature and nurture are important.
How
Do V-Meme Levels Relate?
Persons or groups who
exist at a higher level are not “better people” than those at a lower level; they are merely different, operating with a
different system of thinking. No value system is inherently better or
worse than another, as each has its positive and negative attributes. All have a purpose, depending on the operative Life
Conditions and problems of existence people, groups, or cultures are
experiencing. Appropriateness to the milieu is the key. The question to ask is, “Does the thinking fit the realities.”
Thus, to address issues of environmental responsibility for a planet
undergoing global warming (Green & Yellow v-Memes) to a culture or society experiencing tribal/ethnic group
conflict (Purple and Red modes of thinking and living), is to impose a way of thinking and deep-level values for which
there is no comprehension much less
the mental capability of appreciating and valuing such issues. As Henri L. Bergson said: “The eye sees only what
the mind is prepared to comprehend.” It is not that people at the lower levels
do not have the intelligence to deal with such issues. It is only that the
circumstances impacting life have not awakened the next levels of thinking. All
the Value Systems are within us; they only await the right Life Conditions to
awaken them. The point here is, what
is “appropriate” given the level of complexity of life experienced at that
level of existence? The level of thinking must match the level of
complexity.
Yet, when problems are created at one level, and
these cannot be solved at that level because
of the prevailing systems of thinking, then one must look up to the next level
for their solution. Einstein said as
much when he declared: “The world that we have made as a result of the level of
thinking we have done thus far, creates problems that we cannot solve at the
same level as they were created.”
Jesus made a similar statement: “No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the
skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must
be put into fresh wineskins.” And then, recognizing how hard for people to accept change, he added. “And no one
after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”
(Luke 5:37-39).
Picture, if you will,
an ascending colorful spiral that swirls up from Beige Bands and
Purple
Tribes, and with each level widens its arcs while including the previous level
as it rises to Green Collective Communities,
Yellow Integrated Systems, Turquoise Wisdom Societies and beyond. The ninth
level, Coral, resides in the dim unknown. The higher one moves up the spiral, or the strata of our
cultural dig, the more complex are the Life Conditions. Such is the flow of The Spiral of Human Development (see graphic).
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 18
Figure 4. The
Spiral of Human Development
But
does this mean that all levels are ultimately the same, that all Value Systems
are
equal to the overall good of humankind? Clare W.
Graves, the pioneer of the Theory of Levels of Existence, answers this question best. “I am not saying in this
conception of adult behavior that one style of being, one form of human
existence is inevitable and in all circumstances superior to or better than another form of human existence
another style of being. What I am saying is that when one form of being is more congruent with the realities of existence,
then it is the better form of living
for those realities. And what I am saying is that when one form of existence
ceases to be functional for the
realities of existence, then some other form, either higher or lower in the hierarchy,
is the better style of living. I do suggest, however, and this I deeply believe
is so, that for the overall welfare of total man’s existence in this world,
over the long run of time, higher levels are
better than lower levels and that the prime good of any society’s governing
figures should be to promote human movement up the levels of human
existence” (Beck and Cowan 1996:294).
This concept of “stages” or “levels of development,”
however, does not always rest easy with
people. This is because as Clare Graves explains, people do not see their
striving in life “as merely a stage they are going through, but as the
ultimate, the permanent goal of all life.” Once people
feel they have attained this “ultimate,” this “permanent goal” or understanding
“of life”— and their Life Conditions are
relatively stable—they tend to believe they have “arrived” at the “truth” and
become satisfied and complacent with the extent of their knowledge. Result?
They become conservative and cease to grow. Conservatism in matters of
religion, for example, is a sign of
spiritual stagnation and decline,
and develops when people stop investigating
truth due
to their contentment
with what they already have received and achieved.
Graves
explained what lies behind such thinking. “The real finding is that no one
understands anything above their own level. Even if you like what you hear of a
level higher than you own, you will reinterpret it on the basis of your own
level. Thus, a human being apparently can
experience only up-to those systems that have become operational in his/her
life.
What is spirituality? Memetics, quantum
mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 19
What
individuals tend to do is to listen to what others at a later system are saying
and when they run the content of what they
heard through their top-down processing, it simply comes out, if at all,
at the system they are currently at. No matter what we hear from others we will
run the information through our brains
and that information will generally come out as our system of thinking
understands it” (Lee 1998).
The two value systems that tend to have the most
difficulty grasping this discussion of “levels”
and “stages of human development” are persons operating with either a strong
Blue (Authoritarian) or a Green (Egalitarian)
system of thinking. While the first reflects rigidity from the right,
the other is a rigidity from the left. Blue thinking believes there is no
“truth” beyond their level of
understanding. Green, on the other hand, often operates with naïve relativism
and a flatlander perspective, where
all cultures and value systems are regarded as equal, all truth is relative, and eschews all forms of hierarchical
thinking. “The green meme,” declares Ken Wilber (2000:230-232), “effectively challenging the absolutisms of blue and
orange,” mistakes “all universals and
all holarchies as being of the same order,” and gets “locked” in a closed
system of thinking. Yet, while we must respect and value the various
cultures and a people's respective system of
values (Green thinking), not all values are the same nor are they of equal
worth to what is good and functional for humankind (Yellow thinking). Thus,
while Spiral Dynamics enables us to
understand where Hitler's values came from and why the German people followed him, it does not mean that these values are
acceptable to the overall good of human existence. The Third Reich's culture-specific “absolutes” must
not be confused nor equated with “universals,”
normally regarded as “human rights,” which transcend cultures (Rosado 1990).
The essence of Wisdom thinking
(Turquoise) is to balance the various interests and environments for the widest
common good, through the best practices (Sternberg 1998).
Does this mean that everything is relative?
Absolutely not. Cultural relativism does not imply that there is no system of
moral values to guide human conduct. Rather, it suggests that every society has
its own moral code to guide members of that society, but that these values are of worth to those who live by them, though they
may differ from our own (Herskovits 1973:31; Rosado 1990). At each level people have “absolutes” and experience
truth. But what may be an absolute
at one level may not be the same at another level. This does not mean that
there are multiple “truths,” but that
the truth held may be seen from various perspectives as it unfolds.
Having said all this, it is important to
recognize that a strong, healthy Blue v-Meme is foundational to the entire spiral. It provides the anchors of
law, order, good authority, responsibility, and righteousness without
which individuals, organizations, or nations stand weak. If we lose this crucial system, we lose direction, our moral
compass, the inner core, and the essential foundation of the more
complex systems.
There
are five qualities that characterize the spiral levels:
1.
They are hierarchical—each builds on and integrates the operations of
the previous level.
2.
They are sequential—one
comes after the other in logically necessary fashion.
3.
The sequence is invariant—you can’t skip over a level. The lessons of the
previous level are essential for success in the next level.
4.
The sequence is universal—though the rate of movement is different from
culture to culture, the same series
of levels characterizes the path of human development for all groups (Fowler
1981)
5.
The process is open-ended—there
is no finish, no final state of development; it is on-going (Graves 1974).
What is spirituality? Memetics, quantum
mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 20
Toward
a Definition of Spirituality:
How does all
this relate to spirituality? For years now I have been teaching young people in various academic settings. What I have
discovered is an ever-increasing and profound interest in spirituality.
But what is spirituality? In my classes, especially my sociology of religion
course, I have had to define spirituality in
such a way that it encompasses the needs of all groups and extremes, from born-again Christians, to members
of Wicca, to Earth-First environmentalists enthralled by New Age forms of spiritual thinking, to atheists and
agnostics—all in the same university class. The challenge has been to
define spirituality so that all feel included. I have managed to do this and the outcome has been that all the students, no
matter their particular spiritual
belief system, concurred with the definition as one that resonated with their
needs. Let me put forth two working
definitions of spirituality developed after years of seeking to communicate
this elusive concept to different audiences with varied but often vague understandings of the term.
Spirituality is a state of interconnectedness, an
intangible reality and animating, integrating
life-force that cannot be comprehended by human reason alone but is nonetheless
as important as reason, intellect, and emotion in
accounting for human behavior. It is the center of our
devotion, loyalty and concern, the worship of which constitutes our god—whether
that god be our self, sex, race or ethnic
group, church, money, ideological beliefs, another person, nature, Allah,
Buddha, the Great Spirit or Jesus Christ. It is the object of our ultimate
love, human drive, commitment, source of power, and
our interconnectedness with the Other—the divine, the self, the
human, the natural, or any combination thereof—that nourishes the soul (the
integration of mind, will and emotions), resulting
in a state of security with a sense of worthful purpose in life.
In this
definition of spirituality, God is spelled with a small letter “g” because the
god at the center of most people’s lives,
even among many professed Christians, is not the biblical God, but a human construction—an idol. An idol is any
product of human construction, whether material
or non-material, to which people give their ultimate devotion, loyalty and
concern, and around which they
organize their lives.
Within this
understanding of spirituality there are no atheists, for we are all “spiritual beings.” We all have a spiritual center at the
core of which is our “god” (see graphic), whatever our understanding of that
god may be or however we may have socially constructed it. Whatever a person
gives their ultimate love, devotion, and commitment to, and to the extent that
this thing or object or idea or
person becomes the most important entity in a person’s life, that entity
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 21
becomes
one’s god. Thus, there is no such thing as an atheist or agnostic, for we all
believe in something that transcends who we
are and is greater than us, even if it is our own sense of reified self.
Whatever is at the center of our life, at the core of our spiritual center,
that thing IS our god. The crucial question then is:
who or what is at the center of our life and is our object of worship (Gilkey 1966:233).
Yet, whatever we consider to be our god can only
ultimately serve as god if it is not transitory
or temporal or depends on our whims or social circumstances, here today and
gone tomorrow. Only that which
transcends human existence and is eternal, only that which is not subject to time or temperament, in other words,
cannot be taken from us, can serve as God. Only that which goes beyond our own welfare and is a source of security and
meaning in our lives, and transcends
our human existence, can serve as God.
This does not
mean that people cannot make gods out of all kinds of things, which they do. It simply means that since these things are so temporary
and transitory, most of what passes for god on this earth, leaves people
in a state of insecurity and meaninglessness. Here lies the thirst for spiritual fulfillment and a meaningful
purpose to life, giving rise to a whole generation of “seekers.”
Since the above definition is rather complex, let
me give a simpler version of it. Spirituality is a state of
interconnectedness with the Other—the divine, the self, the human, the natural,
or any combination thereof—that nourishes the soul (the integration of mind,
will and emotions), resulting in a state
of security with a sense of worthful purpose in life.
This is Holistic Spirituality, spirituality in
four dimensions (see graphic), where the
human
center—our social self—is interconnected with: a vertical
to God, the world of the sacred (pictured as an “eternal flame”
within an equilateral triangle symbolic of the Trinity); an inward to
self, the world of personal well-being; a horizontal
to humankind, the world of people; and a outward
to nature, the world of all non-human life-forms.
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 22
Most
Christians tend to have only a one-dimensional form of spirituality, the
vertical, manifested in a personal devotion
to God divorced from concern for humankind, usually within a patriarchal
paradigm. This was the type of spirituality that led to the rise of Monasticism
early in Catholicism and later to
Pietism in Protestantism, and eventually to the current rejection of Christianity by secular humanism. This one-dimensional
kind of Christianity has resulted in a personal
righteousness caught up with an overriding focus on the self in relation to
God, at the expense of love to our
brother, resulting in racism, and to our sister, resulting in sexism. It has given rise to a fundamentalist expression of
Christianity in its proclamations, politics, and practices. It has also given rise to an attitude of indifference toward
the environmental mess we have made in our planet, our ecological habitat that
declares: “Why bother, God is going to clean it up anyway?” It is a closed-Blue v-Meme expression of spirituality.
Another
variant of a one-dimensional spirituality is a lack of a healthy connectedness
to our personal self. Most people have
fragmented selves, which are often expressed in one of two directions, in a sense of self-hatred, personal
abuse, and low self-esteem, or in a narcissistic sense of superiority. These feelings that emerge from a fragmented self
are often times taken out on others through acts of violence, abuse,
dehumanization, discrimination and indifference. Or we can take them out on ourselves in feelings of self-rejection,
inferiority, and in acts of abuse toward
our self, or in a narcissistic self-love, focused on the body-beautiful, and a
preoccupation with ourselves at the expense of others. It was with these
concerns in mind that Jesus declared: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Only
when I have a healthy love toward myself will I have a healthy love toward my
neighbor—the Other in my sphere of influence. If I only have hate for myself, then this self-hate will be expressed in
my relationship to others. Therein lies a source of racism, sexism, and homophobia, a one-dimensional
Red v-Meme expression of spirituality. Thus, one aspect of genuine or holistic
spirituality is a healthy inner connectedness with our inner self.
Other
forms of one-dimensional spirituality have been humanistic approaches focused
only on the
horizontal realm. Pulling strongly from popular, self-help forms of psychology,
there is a growing spiritual
movement seeking to get human beings in touch with their feelings, their emotions
and connections to each other, whether through eastern philosophy, meditation
techniques, or personality development theories. This “new agey,” quick fix,
trendy, fast-food form of spirituality is
invading corporate structures, university campuses, and suburban communities
of America, as people seek to get more in tuned with their so-called “true
inner selves.” It is a Green v-Meme expression of spirituality.
Then there are the two-dimensional forms of
spirituality, one of which focuses on the female/feminine forms of the sacred,
connecting people with nature, their ecological selves, and the rhythms and cycles of the universe. This is
the primary locus of New Age forms of spirituality,
some of which pull from American Indian expressions of spirituality, much to
the abhorence of American Indians (Deloria, Jr. 1992:43), in an inward
and outward direction, seeking to get people
in tune to themselves and to Gaia, the living Earth, personified as Earth Goddess or Mother Nature. Many of these spiritual
forms eliminate the need for the vertical dimension to God, since god is believed to be within and not without, in
the sense that we are all gods. All one has to do is to discover the god
within and in nature. Neo-Pagan groups, Wicca, and Goddess spirituality are examples of this one-dimensional,
Green/Purple v-Meme form of spirituality
The Social Gospel Movement in
Christianity around the turn of the century and
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 23
Liberation Theologies
since the 1960s have also emphasized a two-dimensional form of spirituality—the vertical to God and the
horizontal to humankind. The result has been much political involvement focused on social change and
socioeconomic justice. Yet a missing element
in both approaches has been a concern for our ecological/environmental home. To
counter this missing dimension other forms of two-dimensional spirituality have
emerged such as Zen Buddhism and
Deep Ecology, focused on the horizontal and the outward, by integrating and interconnecting the inner self with the
life-forces of nature through enlightenment. A sense of balance in life is sought through a focus on
the present, centered on personal experience and meditation in connection with nature, another expression of the Green
v-Meme.
All of these
forms of spirituality, however, from Christian, to the body-beautiful, to New Age enlightenment, are but one or at best
two-dimensional constructs of spirituality. These are forms of
spirituality that are individual-centered, in search of community. People today
are seeking “community” and searching for
attachments. Wade Clark Roof (1993:252), drawing from M. Scott Peck, defines community as a sense of well-being arising
out of social/communal bonds where people “share their lives and
communicate honestly with one another,” within “relationships that go deeper
than the masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to ‘rejoice together, mourn
together, and to delight in each other,’” in an environment that fosters the qualities of “sharing, caring, acceptance,
belonging” and compassion. “The
qualities themselves often are more important than the places where they are found.” This is why when people’s spiritual needs
are not met by a specific religious group, they will go elsewhere. Religious brand-name loyalty is out; individual
spiritual needs are in. If people have options and religious choices,
given a chance, they will exercise those options.
Since religion is a
voluntary association, people exercise those options every weekend. If they feel they don’t have options, because of
religious monopoly or political rigidity, and their needs are not being met, they will drop out for a lack
of community. If they have options they will shop elsewhere for their spiritual needs.
A Spiritual Mall:
Rodney Stark’s “religious economies” theory is
most helpful in understanding the idea of religious options. In democratic societies that value religious freedom
what one often encounters, to use an
analogy, is a spiritual superstore or mall with several floors of available
goods, where people can shop for their spiritual needs. Chicago’s Water
Tower Plaza comes to mind. (see graphic)
At each level (visualize memetic levels), people’s
needs differ. At the first level or Beige are survival needs (the realm
of the homeless, the street people, the down and out). Salvation Army does good work here, so also do street
ministries. When these needs are met people then take the spiritual escalator to the next level, Purple, where needs of
family, spiritual security, the church
as the “ark of safety” and “haven of rest” is found. So also one finds here
indigenous religions, cults, and
nature religions. The form of religious expression is not as important as the
nature of the needs being met: needs of spiritual security and the celebrations
of traditions and rituals.
At
the third level, the Red forces are at play: gangs, warlords, self-centered,
arrogant conduct and flashy, gaudy
lifestyles all show off their wares here. Red expressions of religion and
spirituality best meet these needs, storefront churches are found here.
Pentecostalism, with its strong expressions of Red spirituality and Blue
doctrinal rigidness and authoritarianism has
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 24
had good success in reaching out to gangs, drug
addicts, the poor, and those in prisons. Pentecostalism
has also been most successful in impoverished regions of the world: Africa,
Latin America, Asia, and in
impoverished urban sectors. Their Blue authoritarian teachings provide among
the best interventions to Red value systems.
Figure 5. The Superstore of Spiritual
Needs
When these Red needs are met or when people are seeking
stability, sound doctrines and teachings, Blue religions,
usually conservative in doctrine and lifestyle, and found on the fourth memetic
floor, are the best ones to meet such needs. Mormons, Adventists, Baptists,
Jehovah’s Witnesses are all found here. The
differing doctrinal positions among these groups are not what is important here, but
the operational values of “one-right-way,” “people of the book(s),” law and order, “truth,” and delayed gratification.
These are the spiritual good s that can be “purchased” at this floor. Notice that the connecting line between Red
and Blue is the broadest. These are
the groups having the greatest success in numerical growth, for they operate at
the levels where most people are
found, and where the spiritual needs are the greatest.
When the group beliefs become too confining, or when
people want to experience
spirituality
without all the dogma and rituals, and desire a greater freedom in their
worship style,
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 25
Orange
is the floor to take the spiritual elevator to. Here religion is expressive,
without the Blue guilt, the style worship is more
individualistic; one can be rich without being made to feel guilty. Independent
ministries, mall and mega churches are all found here. The worship and
doctrinal style is casual, so is the clothing.
At the 6th Level one finds a Green
spirituality and religious expression that is inclusive, egalitarian, gender and racially sensitive,
environmentally conscious, less focused on doctrines, more focused on social issues, justice concerns,
and peace in the world, Liberal Christian churches (Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, United Church of
Christ, Unitarians). The are the ones
that are experiencing the least growth also, because so few of the population,
at least in the United States, are
found at this level of operational value systems. Here also are various form
of New Age spirituality..
Most denominations and religious groups tend to
function predominantly at one level, though
more and more are beginning to realize that a one-size-fits-all approach (the
flatlander mindset) is no longer possible in a multimemetic (a more
correct term than “multicultural”) society.
More appropriate than “multicultural,” which is focused on the dermal layer
rather than the cranial, is the
realization that society as well as churches are really “multimemetic”—
multiple value systems are
interacting at the same time, within the same environmental space and organization. Yet these systems often have no
method, or spiritual escalator, to reach the floors where people with different spiritual needs are to
be found. At best such groups want these people to make their way “down” to their level. Styles of spirituality
and methods of ministry that reach out to people at levels higher than where
the main spiritual body is found, are condemned,
rejected and denounced.
With the changes taking place in global thinking,
human consciousness, and evolutionary psychology,
the “momentous leap” Graves predicted and is now emerging, is pushing the spiritual envelope far beyond the levels at where
traditional religions function and expressions of spirituality are to be found. They also have
little to offer people who are experiencing a spiritual hunger at the Yellow and Turquoise levels and
beyond. It is not that Christianity, for example, cannot reach people at these levels, for it can
and it is in some circles. It is more the situation that present religious organizations are not able to
perceive a spiritual reality beyond their level of operation, primarily because they see the world
from a mechanical Newtonian paradigm. In Scandinavia, for example, where the
culture operates more at the memetic levels of Green and Yellow, New Age forms
of spirituality, with their transcendent view of reality, are much more popular with the educated populous then
traditional Blue Christianity. The same can be found throughout the United Kingdom and other parts of
Northern Europe. For Christians to say that they have the “truth,” while
regarding others as having “error” does nothing to further their cause. The fact of the matter is that people are
experiencing a spiritual hunger, and when they go to shop at the floors
consistent with their memetic existence (the 6th, 7th, 8th, and
even 9th levels), there is little to nothing of Christianity there,
which finds itself in an arrested mode of development at lower levels. So people “buy” what is available, It may
not be “truth” to others, but it is
“truth” to them. And, wherever it exists, there people will shop and buy. There
they will also find community and their comfort zone.
Thus spirituality,
while being a private journey, finds its most comforting expression in
the
context of community. This is the main point of Emile Durkheim’s famous study
on religion, The Elementary Forms of the
Religious Life, where religion is seen as the
“social glue” that binds the individual to the
group, the moral community (1965).
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 26
The
Spiral of Spirituality:
Why
do we see such interest in spiritual phenomenon in an ever-increasing
scientific
age? Let me suggest
an answer from a Gravesian perspective, using SD theory. There are several reasons, let me offer three: One is “millennial
mania.” Millennial periods bring out millennial movements that focus on spirituality,
the supernatural, and the end of the age. It happened at the turn of the year 1000 (Cohn 1990). Expect to see
in the years ahead an increase in alternative religions and in
spirituality. In fact, spirituality already is one of the hottest commodities
and topics in the media.
A second reason is the bankruptcy of science to answer
the big questions of life: Who we are?
Why we are here? Where we are going? Science cannot answer the why questions of
life in terms of ultimate meaning, only
in terms of causality, and not always. In the face of these ultimate
questions we are all spiritually poor. People are searching for meaning to
their fragile lives, since pure science alone
no longer has the answers to a full understanding of human existence,
no matter how much evolutionary scientists might think that their theories
provide the answers to questions of ultimate
meaning. Ultimately, such theories leave people cold, vacuous, with no sense of the
hereafter. Then too, most people don't live their lives in “pure science” all the time, not even the most scientific ones among
us. We are not always rational in our ideas, attitudes, and actions. The “faith factor,” which transcends reason, is
always present in much of what we do,
whether we like to admit it or not, especially those of us who like to pass
ourselves as always being objective, for even our most sophisticated ideas have
to be taken by “faith” much of the time.
A third reason is a Spiral Dynamics one, which I call,
the “Madonna Shift”—from “material girl” (Orange) to
“spiritual girl” (Green). The current shifts back to rural life, a simpler lifestyle,
and e rethinking of life’s priorities, are all examples of this shift. It is no
longer “he who dies with all the toys wins,” a very Orange meme.
Rather, it is one reflected in Stephen Covey’s
soul-searching maxim, “No one in their deathbed ever wished they had spent more
time at the office” (Covey 1994). Thus after all the toys, stocks, and image
enhancement additions, what’s left? “What’s it all about, Alfie?” This was a
hard question raised by Burt Bacharach in the early 70’s. There has to
be more to fill the emptiness inside. The result is a return to either Blue religion or Green spirituality, or on to
Yellow and Turquoise consciousness transformation. In an unstable age of rapid social change,
hurling down the information highway at the speed of nanoseconds, people
are desperately searching for anchors to the soul. Others are seeking for “quiet zones” away from all the cacophony of
technoise. Many are now seeking and finding it in spirituality (Rosado,
1996). While concern for spirituality has been the realm of religion, much of religion is losing its focus, and a whole
generation, disappointed with the trivia of organized religion, is now looking for spirituality
elsewhere. Thus, secularism, contrary to what was once believed, does not lead to the demise of religion,
but to its transformation through revival and spiritual innovation (Stark and
Finke 2000).
Religion
versus Spirituality:
“If spirituality is
the journey, then a religious tradition functions as a map of the
territory.” This statement by
John Testerman (1997:288) provides a good analogy that clarifies well the difference
between spirituality and religion. Testerman goes on to bring out useful insights from this analogy by suggesting that
sometimes “mapmaking” can consume a person’s time such that it can “take the place of going on the journey.” What
makes this true in many cases is that often good religious folk focus their
whole attention on the rules of the road, but
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 27
never
actually travel the road of spirituality, the map of which they think they know
well. The result is a religious form
without a spiritual experience.
For
others, the problem is an opposite one. They launch out on their spiritual
journey without a map to chart their
journey and “risk getting lost.” This is the route many are taking today in their quest for spirituality, as a result
of their dismissal of organized religion. Since many such folk find the map questionable or prefer their own concocted
map, they launch out on their faith
journey without chart or compass, letting the winds of the “spirit” serve as a
travel guide, blowing where they may.
The results for many are short journeys and spiritual deadends. The dilemma of the spiritual dimension is that
spirituality can exist without a religious institutional home, while for others religion can exist without
spirituality. Either form can ultimately
be unfulfilling since both religion and spirituality are not only personal
journeys but also social experiences
within a supportive community. Yet, as Dale Matthews suggests, “spirituality poses questions; religion composes
answers” (Matthews 1998:182). In light of this discussion, and drawing from Matthews, I define religion, spirituality,
and worship as follows.
Religion: The organized express of faith and the sacred.
“ Is communal, particular, defined by boundaries.”
Spirituality: A state of interconnectedness with the Other that
nourishes the soul —the
integration
of the mind, will, and emotions.
“Is
private, universal, no boundaries.”
Worship: The manner of behavior in the presence of the
sacred.
Is
either communal or private depending on the memetic level at which it is expressed.
Spiral Dynamics and
Spirituality
Many consciousness transformation thinkers believe that
spirituality is found only at the higher levels of thinking and consciousness,
at the memetic levels of Green and beyond. Such a position
in itself is an example of what Ken Wilber calls, the “Mean Green Meme”
(2001)—the idea that only Green thinking has
a correct understanding of the world, its problems, and solutions,
and thereby negates the value and contributions of other levels of thinking.
This is not just a problem unique to Green
thinking, however, since each memetic level has difficulty accepting
anything other than its own worldview (Roemischer 2002).
Spiral Dynamics provides perhaps the best framework for
understanding spirituality, as it shows
how each level of thinking not only has its own unique worldview, operative
value systems, method of decision-making and manner of living, but also
expression of spirituality, form of
organized religion, and style of worship. Spirituality exists at every level of
human development; it is just
expressed differently at each level. Failure to understand this results in a
spiritual arrogance and self-righteous exclusion of other ways of approaching
the divine and the sacred.
Here is how religion, spirituality and expressions of
worship are manifested at each memetic level.
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 28
The Spiral of Religion,
Spirituality, and Worship
Purple: Religion
is the mainspring of life that holds the family-clan-tribe-society
together, and gives meaning and
purpose to life within the context of the group. Spirituality
is an awareness that both nature and everyday life are influenced by The
world of spirits, both good and evil, and needs to be placated through spirit guides–shamans,
mediums, witch-doctors, gods & goddesses, holy men, elders, spiritual
leaders; amulets, totems, signs, and relics of the magic.3
Worship
is traditional and commemorative, safeguarding rituals and ancient religious/spiritual
practices.
Red: Religion
at this level views God as an all-powerful, vengeful, controlling ruler,
with human passions and weaknesses, who can be
bought off. (“God, if get me out of this mess, I’ll...”)
Spirituality is a whimsical “bolt from the blue,”
and often takes on the form of idolatry,
as individuals seek god-like status and deny their mortality.
Worship is experiential and expressive, as each
individual experiences his or her own unique manifestation of the spirit.
Blue: Religion
is organized, institutional, hierarchical in structure, purposive, and rule‑
bound.
Rigidity, guilt, and dogmatism are high.
Spirituality
is self-sacrificing in nature, and is defined as specific beliefs and truths, a code of conduct, and as a contest
between the forces of good and evil, which
will be settled in the end time. The script is “written” and pre-determined; you
simply follow it.
Worship
is adorational and orderly, and objective in character toward the divine.
Orange:
Religion is independent, entrepreneurial, strategic, and success-oriented.
Spirituality is “feels-good,” “tell me more about me,” gushy, emotional, experiential, and multiplistic–many possible ways
but one is best. God can be persuaded,
and wants you to succeed in the here and now, and not wait for the there-and-then.
Worship
is a celebrative event, subjective in character and expression.
Green: Religion is self-help, egalitarian,
communitarian, consensual, and relativistic, but
intolerant. Rigidity is high, dogmatism is low.
Don’t know what they believe, but they are certain about it.
Spirituality is inner-oriented, focused on
internal peace, harmony, and togetherness,
and on connectedness to “natural forces.” Seeks understanding and integration of the mind, soul, and consciousness.
God is within. Is harmonic with Purple.
Worship
is communal and inclusive, not only of participants but also of practices.
Yellow: Religion
is integrative, flexible, inclusive, tolerant, functional, and contextual,
with a flattened organizational
pyramid.
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 29
Spirituality
is inner-directed, mystical, low on dogma, synergetic, but high on expressiveness, without
being sacrificial.
Worship is functional
and individualistic—“what works best for me.”
Turquoise: Religion
is a living, wisdom-oriented, order-seeking system of interdependent
relationships
that transcends the usual human barriers, to create global community in harmony with all
life forms in a single ecosystem.
Spirituality
is holistic and mystical in nature, encompassing four dimensions: the vertical
to God, the inward to self, the horizontal to humankind, the outward to nature.
It stands in awe of the cosmic order, with a macro view of how all life
interconnects
with the divine with a sense of order, purpose, and wisdom. Worship
is mystical and transcendental, a contemplative, holistic union of body, mind,
soul, spirit with the divine.
Coral: At this level of spiritual awakening there is no
Cartesian split differentiating
between Religion,
Spirituality, and Worship. All is one in a state of nondual, nonlocal,
nontemporal mystical union of enlightenment with the Divine. The experience is
a kinesthetic one that transcends and includes and is at one with God with no separation of mind, body, spirit, and
soul from the Divine, in a state that
crosses the threshold of time to experience eternity.
We as humans are “naturally” drawn to relationships, lifestyles,
behavior patterns, places and forms of worship, political positions and
parties, belief systems, modes of entertainment, expressions
of art, musical tastes, other people, worldviews, leadership styles, designs
and places of residence, and spiritual
rituals, etc., which resonate with our dominant (peak) value system, thereby
enabling us to experience a comfort zone that gives us a sense of being “at
home.”
When we encounter any such
entities that lie outside of the “comfort range” of our level of existence, we
experience dissonance, discomfort, displeasure, disinterest and distance.
The level of comfort is measured by the distance
from one’s nodal system (see bar
graphic). The greater the
distance, the greater the level of discomfort. Thus, if my comfort zone is
centered on the Orange v-Meme, then I will be most comfortable with Life
Conditions at this level. The further I move from
this level the greater the sense of discomfort.
Three Streams of
Spirituality:
Three streams of thought with regard to spirituality are
currently flowing. The first and most powerful stream flows from
traditional Blue world-religions, primarily Christianity, Judaism,
Islam, and Hinduism, and emerges from their mechanical Newtonian, linear,
either/or worldview and is focused on their
“holy books.” A second and far-side stream, often at odds with
the first, is the Green New Age stream of spirituality that is increasing in
size. “Green is not New Age,” Don Beck is emphatic to
emphasis, “but New Age finds a niche in Green.” This stream
is transitional between the mechanical and integral world, is very cyclical,
inwardly focused, me-centered, and is
oriented toward spiritualism and the immortality of the soul.
A third stream is emerging, and though right now it is a
mere trickle and most people
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 30
have probably never
heard of it, it will soon become a rushing force that will draw from the best elements of the other two streams to become an
increasingly powerful stream of spiritual thought in this 21st century. This is
the Yellow (“left-brain with feelings” [Beck]) and Turquoise (“right-
brain with data” [Beck]) stream
emerging from Quantum Physics. Exploration of astronomy (not astrology which is in tune with New Age and is
Purple), and the origins of the universe, is giving scientists a new understanding of the “physics”
of God and of spirituality. This stream, as Tipler (1994) brings out, is compatible with the best of
Christianity and the deeper-level spiritual teachings of Jesus and some of the other world religion founders.
This third stream, of which the consciousness
transformation movement and the integral thinking of Ken Wilber are a part, is
spiral in nature and is riding the crest of the first waves of Graves’
“momentous leap” of human development that is emerging on the horizon of human existence.
The first stream is 1st Tier spirituality. The second one is transitional. The third reflects 2nd Tier spirituality and beyond. This third stream
is also pushing the boundaries of spiritual
rituals, contemplation, and connection with God.
Spiritual
Rituals and Connection with the Divine:
All three
streams have different spiritual rituals by which to connect with the Divine.
At the Purple to Green levels but primarily
Blue, much of what passes for Christian, Jewish, and Islamic spiritual rituals—the first stream—is
centered on the Sacred Writings, prayer, and group ritual. It is often a
cognitive exercise, connecting heart and mind with position of body in a
mechanical, routinized, but religious exercise of spiritual connection. There
is an intellectual union with God that
affects the spirit and the heart, nourishes the soul, and exercises the body.
But the four dimensions of bio-psycho-social-spiritual are distinct, discrete,
and disconnected. It is First Tier
“Subsistence” spirituality, very linear and dualistic in nature with an
either/or, leftbrain/right-brain
view of reality and spiritual expression.
The
second stream of spirituality is cyclical, transitional, often draws on Purple
indigenous rituals,
fertility rites, and Green connections with nature. There are few “holy books,”
some popular writing, and some of
the spiritual exercises include trance-inducing elements.
At the other end, the third stream, is the Second
Tier “Being,” Integral world of mystical spirituality. It kinesthetic and seeks to connect with God directly,
without intermediaries such as the
Holy Book or other sacred writings, through the mystical oneness of body, mind,
soul, spirit as one integrated whole
in connection with God in spirit, such that energy-flows are experienced between the individual and God. This is the
ultimate spiritual connection that Jesus desired for his followers. “God is spirit,” he said, “and
those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). The purpose is to have a mystical, kinesthetic,
holistic union with God divorced of
disconnection and distraction. It is spiral in nature, ascending to higher and
higher levels of spiritual awareness
and divine enlightenment. While the integral uses all the learning styles (cognitive, affective, auditory, and
kinesthetic), all are directed toward the kinesthetic—a holistic, non-localistic, non-verbal union with
the divine. The mechanical stays in the cognitive, affective and auditory with very little
kinesthetic union. Truth in the First Tier is recognized outwardly. In the Second Tier, which builds on the
First, truth is recognized inwardly.
There
is a close connection between spiritual development and a balanced table of
life. When the four dimensions of the table—the
bio-psycho-social-spiritual—are balanced there is an open
connection for continual spiritual growth and a mystical union with the Divine.
When the table is not balanced, the
mystical union is cut off or blocked and the spiritual energy is channeled into other
areas of life, where they become the drugs of choice: sexuality, pseudo‑
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 31
intellectualizing,
spiritual seduction, and other deviant paths. At the 2nd
Tier, integral levels, all these dualisms of the Newtonian
worldview cease. A oneness with life, self, the universe and with
God is experienced within a quantum nonlocality state of interconnectedness,
devoid of dualistic, binary thinking.
The point of
these spiritual rituals, however, is connection with the divine. For the first,
the predominantly Blue religions, the
mechanical process is very important, partly because it is the only worldview
recognized as legitimate, and partly because it is the accepted method of distinguishing
truth from error. But the connection with God at this level is partial,
deductive, and often unfulfilling, within a cognitive, left-brain vs.
right-brain context. And if the person remains
at this level of spiritual growth and development, the experience will be an
incomplete one, though not always
recognized as such by the participant(s). The other experience is holistic, integral, intuitive, and whole-brain in approach
and kinesthetic connection. But as Jesus made clear, one must come to
God not only in spirit but also in “truth.” There are false connections, not
all spirit are true spirits; communication with evil spirits and mediums is
also possible, as was King Saul’s experience
in the Old Testament (I Samuel 28). There are other spirits that lead one to believe that one is God, and by extension
no longer needs God. That is why the spirits must be “tested” to see whether or not they are of God. Not the “me-god”
of New Age, but the biblical God of
love and compassion as manifested in the Person of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately,
even the
Judeo-Christian faith does not know this Jesus, for much of what is taught and
practiced in His name is still in an arrested mode of First Tier development of
spirituality, and used for destructive
purposes. That is the reason why those who are at the Second Tier of spiritual development do not find much of value within
present-day, First Tier, church-based Christianity (see Super Mall graphic).
Part of the
problem with 1st
Tier, mechanical spirituality is that it often gets all caught up in hermeneutics, in the study, analysis,
interpretation, and diagnosis of the outward truth of spirituality, and misses out on the inward
experience of spiritual union with God. Yet, the one should not negate the need for the other. Jesus
balanced his time between the mountain and the multitude. On the mountain he experienced a mystical union with God,
which fueled Him to face the crowds below. Amidst the multitude he
pushed the envelope of their first tier understanding of spirituality and religious behavior. “You have heard that it was
said...but I say to you...” In the end they never grasped what He was talking
about, as their worldviews did not allow for other levels of
understanding. And thus, with a sense of resignation, disappointment, yet hope,
he said toward the end of his earthwalk, “I still have many things to say to
you, but you cannot bear them now. When the
Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:12, 13).
Such an integral, mystical experience was the one
the biblical prophets had with God, as also have other mystics
throughout history. See Ursula King. Christian Mystics: The Spiritual Heart
of the Christian Tradition (1998). The Apostle Paul also had a similar
experience and described it in this manner.
“I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third
heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows”
(2 Corinthians12:2). This is a
spiral, intuitive connection, as opposed to the first being linear and mechanical
and the second being cyclical and repetitive. Yet, as a friend shared with me, reflecting
on this point: “The Bible is actually very full of mystical references,
although they are not recognized as such by most
people who claim the Bible as their source of truth, as their sacred writing.”
Then my friend raised an intuitive question. “So how did that happen, if nowadays
we are supposed to be so much farther along than they...” An insightful
question
What is spirituality? Memetics, quantum
mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 32
indeed. The answer, I
believe, is found in that people became comfortable with what they had received. They then canonized it, codified it,
treasured it, and stopped growing. They thus become conservative and ceased learning, and dogmatized and fossilized
their understanding of truth within
a mechanical, binary (either/or) Newtonian worldview. Yet, as stated earlier in
this article, "Conservatism in
matters of religion is a sign of spiritual stagnation and decline, and develops
when people stop investigating truth due to their contentment with what they
already have received and achieved.” But, there is more a lot more to spiritual
growth, and we are only just beginning to know who we are in
relationship to what we can become. Eternity, the future that lies before us, will be a state of continual,
experiential growth in spiritual development. This state of nonduality and nonlocality is not so
much understood cognitively, as it is experienced kinesthetically. The
difference, however, between knowing all this intellectually and knowing it by experience is a quantum leap, and is part of
the “momentous leap” Graves talked about.
What makes the "momentous leap"
"momentous" is that it represents a shift from the Newtonian, mechanical, linear worldview, with all
its dualisms and binary thinking, to the integral, holonic world of quantum physics and chaos theory. Here life is
holistically experienced within a
quantum nonlocality state of interconnectedness that “transcends and includes.”
The reason why the 2nd tier levels are able to see the whole spiral is because they are now
on the other side of the chasm operating with a holistic, spiral, quantum
worldview.
While the concept of Life Conditions is most
important for change at the First Tier levels, LCs take on another dimension at the 2nd tier quantum levels of
nonduality and nonlocality. By nonduality
I mean a mystic oneness with the universe whereby we experience life not as
separate entities but as an
integrated/interinfluenced "whole" of relationships; by nonlocality,
I am referring to two entities
influencing each other in a manner that distance or location is not a factor, as in the "spooky action" of
Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen's famous experiment. Here the very nature of life at the Turquoise level and
beyond in Coral is more of what David Bohm suggests is an "unbroken wholeness," which affirms the
interconnectedness of the whole universe. This is the quantum nonduality
and nonlocality of holistic interconnectedness that transcends the binary separateness of localistic, Newtonian physics and
the Cartesian mind/body split, which
struggles with a congruence between the Life Conditions and the Mental
Capacities. Life at the higher levels of 2nd tier is no longer "left-brain with
feelings" and "right-brain with data," but “whole-brain” with a mystical union with the universe.
Spirituality and
Compassion:
There is a profound relationship between
spirituality and compassion, for wherever genuine spirituality is
manifested the other is also present. Matthew Fox (1979) has addressed this connection in a most inspirational and
challenging manner. Compassion is a heavenly plant transplanted to earth, and wherever it is manifested,
God is there. “Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen
God” (3 John 11). Compassion is a rare commodity in the world today,
especially the business and political world. To be successful in the
interconnected world of interdependence and
interhuman relations of the 21st century, compassion needs to be a necessary individual and institutional character
quality.
Compassion is not the
same as sympathy. There is a vast difference. Sympathy (meaning to sorrow with) is an emotional response of
sorrow toward another being generated by pity. Whereas compassion (meaning to
suffer with) is the ability to suffer with another being with loving, caring concern, in an endeavor to
alleviate suffering through reciprocal action to remove the pain and meet the
need.
What is spirituality? Memetics, quantum
mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 33
Three
couplets illustrate the difference between the two.
1.
Sympathy looks down with teary-eyed pity and says, “Oh, I am so
sorry.” Compassion comes down with loving concern and declares, “How can I be
of help?”
2.
Sympathy remains in the realm of
affection. Compassion always
moves from affection to action.
3.
Sympathy is some times motivated out of self-interest in a pious cloak. Compassion is motivated out of a
genuine concern for others with
no strings attached. The essence of Compassion
is taking the role of the Other and viewing life from the Other’s perspective,
out of the Other’s situation of need, as a motivation for action.
How do compassion and sympathy differ from
empathy? These three concepts tend to be confused in the minds of many as similar or even the same, but they are
not. They are vastly different and
elicit from the respondent three different behaviors. These three behaviors can
best be illustrated in the following
manner.
1. In
Sympathy there is sorrow
for the Other in need. But with sorrow there is also a sense
of distance, separation from the Other, and an “I’m-not-like-you” type of
response. Even though there is an emotional
response, the “bridge of identification” with the Other has not been
crossed.
Sympathy tends to be a response from the Blue Value System, focused on right
living, truth, justice. It thus tends to look down with pity,
often with a self-righteous, judgmental mindset.
“If you lived right and planned for the future, you would not be in this fix.”
2. In
Empathy there is not only sorrow, but also identification
with the Other in need. Here the person crosses the
“bridge of identification” and enters into the emotional sphere of the Other and identifies
with the pain. The Other senses and knows that identification has taken place. This response tends to arise from a Green
Value System—“I share your pain.”
What is spirituality? Memetics, quantum
mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 34
3.
In Compassion there is not only sorrow and identification with the Other in
need, but also an involvement in action
to meet the need.
Here the
response does not stop at identification, but goes one step further to take the
necessary steps of action to alleviate suffering. The two-way arrow symbolizes
that the action takes into consideration
the wishes and, if possible, the involvement of the Other in a reciprocal process of bringing about change through
empowerment. This is a response from the Turquoise v-Meme, where the connection
is with the spirit of the Other, as part of being a world citizen, seeking
harmony and oneness with the human family. Much of what passes for compassion, however, is often an imposition from the outside
without regard for what might be best for the Other nor for their input. This is compassion from a Blue v-Meme rather
than from Turquoise. It is also a manifestation of compassion without
the understanding of the spiral of human needs. Much of Green’s good intentions fall into this trap, imposing from the
top, instead of understanding the Life Conditions and situation of where
people find themselves and then implementing interventions at those levels.
This is the problem that “do-gooders” from the developed world experience when
seeking to give aid to people in less developed countries.
In addressing the needs of others from these three
helping responses, one first needs to ascertain the level of existence
and operational values of the person being helped in relation to the person helping. A person at Blue and needing
sympathy may not want anything beyond that, such as “I experience your
pain,” since their sense of self may be at stake. Those in need of empathy may be frustrated with so-called
do-gooders who limit their action to emoting without action. Others in need of compassion may become
frustrated with people whose only effort is to talk about compassion with no
action, a tendency among some Greens, who believe they are compassionate simply
because they talk about compassion. It is so easy to be caught up with compassion-talk deprived of compassion-action.
These
three expressions of human response are reflective of different value systems
and levels of existence. Persons at the lower levels are not able to understand
nor appreciate the response of people at the higher levels. Thus the Blue
Sympathizers may not appreciate the comments
and responses of the Green Empathizers, and especially the actions of the
Turquoise Compassionate. The same thing can
be said with Empathy in relation to Compassion. If they are operating with an Open
mindset, however, they will be able to accept the response but not understand where it is coming from. A sense of
being patronized can be the response from the lower levels to the higher levels ("stop patronizing me"),
while the possibility of a condescending attitude is there from the
higher levels to the lower levels, especially Green Empathy to Blue Sympathy. Genuine compassion, because it is a Second
Tier response, is not condescending.
For Green empathizers there is such a thing as "compassion fatigue"
but not for
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 35
Turquoise,
who believe that compassion is a rare commodity in the world today, and because
of its short supply, the world needs more and not less of it. So for Turquoise
Compassion, there is no such thing as Compassion
Fatigue. In reality compassion fatigue is nothing more than the attitude,
"I am tired of serving so let me blame the victim, since I do not want to
appear as the bad-guy here, since my good,
caring image is at stake."
There is nothing wrong with
sympathy, per se, however. There are many times when the only
action a person can take is limited at a sympathetic response. There are other
times when one can go further and express
empathy. And there will be times when the opportunity will be there
to express compassion. The problem comes when one has the ability to
demonstrate
compassion, but for reasons of one’s own choosing,
decides to limit the action only to sympathy or
at best empathy. This is what the story of the Good Samaritan is all about
(Luke 10)—to see oneself in the
experience of the Other and move into action to change the circumstances, and
not just limit one’s efforts to a mere sympathetic or empathetic response.
Compassion, thus, is an attitude, a way of life, which arises out
of spirituality—that
sense of interconnectedness that nurtures
the soul—and manifests itself in action.
But
neither is compassion the same as altruism. Altruism is a helping behavior that
may or may not arise out of compassion.
Whereas compassion is always altruistic, altruism may or may not be
compassionate, in the sense that it can on occasions just be a spontaneous
reaction with no sense of interconnectedness to the Other, other than helping
someone in need. Altruism
is both innate and
learned; compassion is not innate, it is learned. At the heart of compassion
lies “respect”—the process whereby
the Other is treated with deference, courtesy, and compassion in an endeavor to safeguard the integrity, dignity,
value, and social worth of the individual. It means
treating people the way they want to be treated. As Nicholas Berdyaev declares: “To eat bread is a material act, to break and share it a
spiritual one.” This is the mark of true spirituality— compassion.
Thus, what is needed is a four-dimensional, holistic
spirituality that connects us to God, to our self, to
humankind and to our ecological world, thereby creating community— compassionate and caring. This is a spirituality
that serves as an integrating life-force that
dissolves all four
forms of alienation—religious, human, ecological, and spiritual—and fuses all four dimensions with meaning, purpose, and unity
in diversity in community. It is a
spirituality centered
on God—the Great Spirit—that balances our relationship and responsibility to
our fellow human beings, to our environmental home, and to our self with a
meaningful, purposive existence in community.
People
today are searching for meaning to all the chaos in society and in their lives.
This is the driving force behind the quest for spirituality, a need for a
caring, compassionate community, a desire for a sense of meaning to life—the why behind the what—a sense of worthful purpose. Langdon Gilkey (1966) says,
“Meaning in life is the spiritual fuel that drives
the human machine.
Without it we are indifferent and bored; there is no ambition to work, we are inspired
by no concern or sense of significance, and our powers are unstirred and so lie
idle. Without ‘meaning’ we are undirected
and a vulnerable prey to all manner of despair and anxiety, unable to stand firm against any new winds of
adversity.” A recovery of holistic spirituality in its four dimensions
changes all this.
Genuine or holistic spirituality,
security, and meaning to life is found when our lives are centered
in that which cannot be taken away from
us. Why? Because only that which
cannot be taken away from us is able to
give us a sense of genuine security, and is the only thing that can qualify
as GOD in our center of spirituality. Everything else dissolves under pressure
or changes
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 36
with time.
The Source of Genuine
Spirituality:
In an unstable age of rapid socio-political change,
people are desperately searching for an anchor
to the soul. But what is it that “triggers” this search? What forces are
operative in a person that raises the need to change spiritually,
either to seek God in the first place, as in a change from a Red
self-destructive lifestyle to a Blue conscientious, authority-driven existence,
or from one level to the next for that
matter? Clare Graves long ago said that it is a change in the “life
conditions” (the circumstances and combination of five factors: Time, Place,
Problems, Circumstances, and Capabilities)
that serves as a catalyst that motivates a person to change. We cannot change people, but the life situations may
be such that these trigger the need for change. Carolyn Myss, in her book, Anatomy
of the Spirit, agrees with Graves as to the
importance of the life conditions as a change agent and as a trigger of
spirituality.
The trigger that causes people to seek deeper meaning and
psychological and spiritual ‘ascension’ is usually
a physical disorder that creates a personal or professional earthquake.
We all tend to look upward when the ground beneath our feet shifts out of control (1996).
But this search for spirituality
can be just as bankrupt as science, if people place at the center
of their life that which is not eternal and divine, but temporary and
transitory lacking community. Failure to center life
on the sacred has resulted in the various forms of alienation throughout
history—religious, human, ecological, and now spiritual.
Today, American society is becoming more and more awashed
in spirituality. It seems like everything is taking on a
sense of spirituality, from aerobics, to the environmental
movement, to
vegetarianism. But it is also a spirituality that flees from grace,
the Christian belief that
human salvation is all of God divorced of human effort. Grace, the source of
genuine spirituality, makes all our efforts
to make ourselves divine beings irrelevant because it proclaims us already accepted and “legitimated by the work
of Someone Else, without a single effort on our part” (Capon 1996).
Today’s pop-brand of spirituality is an expression of the sacred that keeps the divine firmly in the grasp of human control.
People today “will buy any recipe for [spirituality] as long as that
formula leaves the responsibility for cooking up [spirituality] firmly in human hands” (Capon 1996). The result is a
shaping of God in various images of humankind. This is because people tend to develop or gravitate toward those forms
of religious expression that are compatible with their cultural lifestyle,
social behavior , and give meaning to their existence. In other words, instead
of being created in the image of God, people create God in their own image.
Langdon Gilkey (1966:234) gives us the core reason why God must be center of our spirituality.
The only hope in the human situation is that the
“religiousness” of [human beings] find its true center in God, and not in the
many idols that appear in the course of our
experience.
If [people] are to forget themselves enough to share with each other, to be honest
under pressure, and to be rational and moral enough to establish community,
they
must
have some center of loyalty and devotion, some source of security and meaning, beyond their own
welfare.
This center of loyalty beyond themselves cannot be a
human creation, greater than
What is spirituality? Memetics, quantum
mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 37
the
individual but still finite, such as the family, the nation, tradition, race,
or the church. Only the God who created all [peoples] and so
represents none of them exclusively; only the
God who rules all history and so is the instrument of no particular historical
movement; only the God who judges His faithful as well as their enemies,
and loves and cares for all, can be the
creative center of human existence.
The ultimate concern of each
[person] must raise [him or her] above [their] struggles
with
their neighbor instead of making these conflicts more bitter and intense. Given
an ultimate security in God's eternal love, and an
ultimate meaning to [their] own small life in
God’s eternal purposes, a [person] can forget [their] own welfare and for the
first time look at [their] neighbor free
from the gnawings of self-concern.
From this we can perhaps now see what the [person] of
real faith is like. [He or she] is the [person] whose center of
security and meaning lies not in [their] own life but in the power
and love of God, a [person] who has surrendered an overriding concern for
[themselves],
so that the only really significant things in [their] life are the will of God
and [their] neighbor’s welfare. Such faith is intimately related to love, for
faith is an inward self-surrender, a loss of self-centeredness and
concern which transforms a [person] and
frees [them] to love.
Thus, a balanced approach suggests that genuine,
holistic spirituality needs to be centered in
God, the true object of our worship, who does not change but is the same
yesterday, today and forever, thereby creating a
sense of integrated balance between our self, the human, the natural and the
spiritual worlds. This Spirit-uality
then is none other than the Divine Spirit,
who creates a longing and yearning for God in the human heart, along with a
deep reverence and respect for—but not worship of—nature,
our fellow human beings, and our self.
Saint
Augustine (Early Church Father, 354-430), recognizing humankind’s need for spirituality, declared: “Thou hast made us for
Thyself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in
Thee.” Blaise Pascal (French mathematician, philosopher, physicist and father of statistics, 1623-1662), reminded us
that, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each [person], which cannot be satisfied by any
created thing but only by God.” This is the essence and source of genuine, holistic spirituality, interconnectedness
with God.
The challenge this poses for
spiritual seekers is to develop a spiritual life built on holistic spirituality
that creates community, rather than on traditional one-dimensional or at best
two- or three-dimensional models of
spirituality arising out of individualism or self-centeredness. Only then
will one’s table of life be balanced, resulting in a life of meaningful purpose
and dedicated compassionate service to others.
Only then will we take the first spiral steps that move us from Flatland
toward creating a caring society.
Notes:
1 Comments
by John Edser, independent researcher, from a discussion between members of the
International Paleopsychology Project headed by Howard
Bloom.
2 This
discussion of Value Systems theory comes from the seminal research of Dr. Clare
W. Graves (Union College, NY), “Human Nature Prepares
for a Momentous Leap,” The Futurist,
April 1974, and from his students, Don E. Beck, Chris C. Cowan, Spiral
Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership and Change
(Blackwell, 1996), and an e-mail the author received from William
Lee, another former student of Graves. Additional thoughts come from Beck’s
article,
What is spirituality? Memetics,
quantum mechanics, and the spiral of spirituality 38
“Turbulence
in the Balkans, a Paleo-Cultural View,” e-mail to author April 20, 1999. The
best single article on Spiral Dynamics, however, is the one by Jessica
Roemischer, “The Never-
Ending Upward Quest. A WIE Editor Encounters the
Practical and Spiritual Wisdom of Spiral Dynamics: An Interview
with Dr. Don Beck, “ in the magazine, What Is
Enlightenment? Fall/Winter Issue, 2002.
3 An illustration of how the Purple value system
functions in Filipino society is the paper by
Reuel U. Almocera, “Scientific
Mindset, Animistic Worldview, and the Gospel: Implications for Religious Education in the Asia-Pacific Region.”
A paper presented at the 26th Annual Faith and Learning
Seminar on Science and Religion held at the Geoscience Research Institute, Loma
Linda, CA, July 16-28, 2000.
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