This Week on Integral Spiritual Center....
An Unaware Fight - Ken Wilber
The Communion of Saints - Fr. Thomas Keating
An Unaware Fight (audio)
The past year has seen
some very public debates between proponents of Darwinian evolution and
Intelligent Design. An Integral perspective of this argument reveals
that these two camps—the “New Atheists” on one side, (Christopher
Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris), and a variety of fundamentalist
Christian apologists on the other, are not even speaking the same
language, though they mistakenly assume that they are.
In this week’s featured
audio, Ken Wilber discusses how, by applying an Integral perspective,
particularly by including an awareness of levels of development, one
can better understand the disconnect in this debate, and embrace both sides, and discover the more inclusive truth, the one that transcends and includes them both.
Here’s how: levels of
development determine, though not definitively, the way we interpret
our experience. Developmental research shows us that instead of
assuming that there is a “given” world (created by God or created by
the laws of nature) that we can make factual statements about, we
should more accurately assume that a worldspace arises when we
look from a given altitude through a given perspective, and that some
worldviews are more inclusive (and thus more true) than others.
In this debate the
Integral model highlights how these two sides inhabit entirely
different levels of development, and thus see entirely different
worldspaces. As a result, they are not sharing meaning. Though the
words they use to debate this issue may be identical, the meaning each
party constructs out of those words is likely to be completely
different. Essentially, these two groups are not talking to each
other. It’s a disconnect, one that only an Integral model can
highlight.
For example, Christopher
Hitchens seems to acknowledge that development occurs, and that people
make meaning of their world from their level of development. Why then,
he asks, don’t people simply make meaning by trying to understand how
the universe works? Which is precisely how people at an orange
altitude/rational worldview make meaning….
Sam Harris, himself a
meditator, also seems to lack an awareness of levels of development in
his expressed respect for Buddhism (as opposed to the other major
religious traditions) as much more than a mythic worldview. This
assertion discounts that fact that Buddhism is held mythically by
millions of people worldwide. There are mythic Buddhists, rational
Buddhists, pluralistic Buddhists, and integral Buddhists. Each is a
Buddhist, each has an entirely different interpretation of Buddhism.
Integral therefore concludes that the problem is not any particular
religion, it is the level of development of the adherent that can
become problematic, particularly when people at different levels of
development try to communicate.
So listen in, and view this debate in a whole new light.