Excerpts From:

The Chrysalis Age: A Handbook for Spiritual and Global Transformation in the New Millennium
 

Transformation and Transcendence of the Self: What is Spirituality?

Before we continue to explore the different aspects of the world it will be useful to pause and define both the idea of spirituality and the Spiritual worldview.  One of the central themes of this book is that we need to not only recognize that wider worldviews are available to us, but that we must transcend our current worldviews for these deeper ways of knowing if we are to have any hope of avoiding the various dangers that our current ways of perceiving are creating in the world.  Therefore, even if we are able to supplant the Postmodern, Modern, and Traditional worldviews with an Integral worldview on individual and collective levels, we will still have Spiritual worldviews waiting to be discovered and passed into. 

 

“Spirit or God or Highest Reality is the phenomenon that allows us to transcend the human tendency to act out on others the pain that has been acted upon us and thus to break the ‘repetition compulsion.’  To speak of that capacity to transcend and break the repetition compulsion and become embodiments of generosity and love and goodness is to talk about Spirit.  Our meaning in life comes from being embodiments of that Spirit, elements of the transcendent consciousness of the universe as it moves to actualize goodness and beauty.”

Michael Lerner, Spirit Matters, p. 7

 

“When appearances and names are put away and all discrimination ceases, that which remains is the true and essential nature of things and, as nothing can be predicated as to the nature of essence, it is called the “Suchness” of Reality.  This universal, undifferentiated, inscrutable Suchness is the only Reality… and when all things are understood in full agreement with it, one is in possession of Perfect Knowledge.”

Buddhist Lankavatata Sutra 83

 

“Beyond the sense is the mind, beyond the mind is the intellect, higher than the intellect is the Great Atman [Soul], higher than the Great Atman is the Unmanifest.  Beyond the Unmanifest is the Person, all-prevading, and imperceptible.”

Katha Upanishad, 2.3.7-8

 

“Divinity is that which was there before the appearance of heaven and earth, and which gives form to them; that which surpasses the yin and the yang, yet has the quality of them.  This Divinity is thus the absolute existence, governing the entire universe of heaven and earth, yet at the same time, it dwells within all things, where it is called spirit; omnipresent within human beings, it is called mind…. Itself without form, it is Divinity which nurtures things with form.”

Shinto, Kanetomo Yoshida, An Outline of Shinto, quoted from World Scripture, The International Religious Foundation, p. 62

 

Stars are the silent children of creation; sparkling miniature suns, swimming in ebony.  When I was a young boy, growing up in rural Michigan, it was my responsibility to take the dogs out for their nightly walk.  More often than not the dogs would run off down the dirt road we lived on in search of some faint olfactory treasure that I had no hope of sensing.  The road went on for a mile or more of wooded darkness, our house being the last small signpost of civilization.  I would run through the pitch black night hoping not to trip and fall, knowing that the dogs could hear me as well as they could see me, though I could gain no apprehension of them until stumbling upon them in a rush.  Finally bending their desires to my will, we’d walk back toward the house.  As we walked I would stare up through the branches of the trees at the glowing mass of stars that blanket the country night.  An avid fan of science fiction and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, I knew that there were “billions and billions” of stars and even as many galaxies filling an unimaginably unfillable universe.  I knew that I could not fathom the expansiveness and depth of the cosmos, but walking beneath the mantle of distant suns, the dogs licking my hands, I would stare up into the face of infinity and try none-the-less.  A feeling would wash over me, slight, and nearly imperceptible.  A feeling I did not label at the time, but that I later came to think of as spiritual.  It was not a profound mystic experience of union with the universe, simply a deep sense of connection with everything.  A feeling that, while I was an infinitesimally small part of the cosmos, I was an important part, because I was aware that I was part of it.  By the time I reached the front steps, the notion had faded, but the sense of it continued to cling to me.

Nearly everyone has had an experience they would describe as spiritual, like those I encountered walking the dogs on star-filled nights.  Like most people, for many years, I thought of myself as spiritual without ever really knowing what I meant by the word.  It was only when I began reading the sacred texts of the world’s wisdom traditions and the writings of modern transpersonal psychologists that I began to have an inkling of what I meant by spirituality.  And this inkling only grew into an understanding when I began a regular practice of meditation.  And so, today I have a simple definition of what I mean when I use the word spiritual.  To me, the word spiritual implies a direct realization of the numinous or the Divine, the apprehension on some level of Spirit as the Ground of all Being.  It denotes a shift of our normal way of “seeing” the world and a transcendence of our separate sense of ego-self for a wider grasp of reality.  It is an experience, on one level or another, of the Divine, or Spirit, as an inseparable wholeness, manifesting as the entire kosmos, moment by moment, in a timeless now.  Not surprisingly, it is an explicitly mystic worldview.  As theologian Paul Tillich pointed out, mysticism “plunges directly into the ground of being and meaning, and leaves the concrete, the world of finite values and meanings, behind.”^[i]  It does not forget this concrete world, but transcends it.  In its highest form, is an experience of the nondual awareness of the singularity of the universe found most clearly in the superlative practices of the Advaita Vedanta and Buddhist paths.  By consequence, I define spirituality as a path or practice that leads to a spiritual awareness, such as those mystic paths that are the revelatory core of all the major religions.  Psychologist Roger Walsh explains that: “The ultimate aim of spiritual practices is awakening; that is, to know our true Self and our relationship to the sacred.  However, spiritual practices also offer numerous other gifts along the way….Gradually, the heart begins to open, fear and anger melt, greed and jealousy dwindle, happiness and joy grow, love flowers, peace replaces agitation, concern for others blossoms, wisdom matures, and both psychological and physical health improve.”[ii]

These brief definitions of Spirit and spirituality are by no means exhaustive, but this is the way I will use these words throughout the book.  Do not worry if these definitions are not immediately clear to you, they will be returned to and explored in more depth later on.  And for absolute clarity, I am not claiming any great spiritual realization on my part.  I am not enlightened or anything close to it.  I am merely acknowledging that there are worldviews wider and deeper than my own and trying to provide a clear explanation of why we need them, what they look like, and how we might all attain them.

 

 

Stages of Transpersonal/Spiritual Development 

The field of study that examines the spiritual states of consciousness and stages of development is called transpersonal psychology.  The spiritual stages of development are the ultimate reaches of our human potential and only by becoming aware of them and studying them we can eventually attain them.

 

“Transpersonal experiences may be defined as experiences in which the sense of identity or self extends beyond (trans) the individual or personal to encompass wider aspects of humankind, life, psyche, and cosmos. Transpersonal disciplines study transpersonal experiences and related phenomena.  Practitioners seek to expand the scope of their disciplines to include the study of transpersonal phenomena and to bring their particular disciplinary expertise to this study. Transpersonal Psychology is the psychological study of transpersonal experiences and their correlates.  These correlates include the nature, varieties, causes, and effects of transpersonal experiences and development as well as the psychologies, philosophies, disciplines, arts, cultures, life-styles, reactions, and religions that are inspired by them, or that seek to induce, express, apply, or understand them.”

            Roger Walsh and Frances Vaughn, Paths Beyond Ego, p.3

 

Integral philosopher Ken Wilber has accomplished another, more extensive, systematic mapping of worldviews than we have explored thus far.  Synthesizing Western and Eastern philosophy, developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, evolutionary theory, systems theory, and the mystic writings of the world’s great wisdom traditions, Wilber has managed to create a truly holistic map of reality.  With this map he has successfully included the truths, but not the errors (or so he hopes), of nearly all the modes of understanding that humanity has created.  The most important aspect of Wilber’s work, in my opinion, is that he has managed to convincingly explore the stages of transpersonal development that succeed the primarily personal stages.  These are the spiritual stages of development described by mystics of all persuasions. 

The scientific study of the spiritual stages of human development is known as transpersonal psychology.  Wilber is not the only researcher to investigate the Spiritual or transpersonal stages of development.  Beginning with William James there is a long line of psychologists and philosophers who have explored the further reaches of human nature.  These include, in no particular order, Richard Maurice Bucke, Evelyn Underhill, Aldous Huxley, Stanislav Grof, Michael Washburn, Jenny Wade, Roger Walsh, Frances Vaughn, and Sri Aurobindo.  However, as much as I respect and admire the work of all these individuals, it is precisely because Wilber attempts to integrate the best all of them into his system that I believe it is not only the most comprehensive, but the one best suited for discussing the spiritual stages of development.   

Wilber’s transpersonal spectrum of consciousness adds four distinct stages to the other systems of personal development, which he incorporates into his system as well.   Briefly, the first is the Psychic level, or nature mysticism, where the unity with all living things is perceived and lived.  This is also the level where actual psychic events may be experienced.   The Hindu tradition refers to this as the siddhas, which distract many spiritual aspirants from ultimate realization.  The next level is the Subtle, or deity mysticism, where one experiences unity with one’s primal archetypes, or one’s personal god.   A near-death experience is one example of this, but a sustained realization at this level often includes experiences of interior illuminations and a deep unity with not just all life (or the gross level) but the actual mechanisms that support life, the subtle forms, or the laws of the universe if you will.   The third stage is the Causal; unity with the Witness, and the emptiness, or void, from which all arises.   This stage is what is generally considered enlightenment, but there is a final stage: the Nondual or Unity Consciousness stage, in which identification with even the Witness, the void, with emptiness, is transcended and there is simply unity, simply Spirit.   There is no subject and no object, there is simply All.  Spirit as Spirit.  All of these stages are covered in more detail later.

Wilber’s transpersonal stages of consciousness are based on a cross-cultural study of the world’s mystic traditions as well as modern consciousness research.  While there are many scientists attempting to explain the spiritual experience as a neurological event, trying to pinpoint a “God Module” within the brain, these conjectures miss the point.^[iii] All experiences are neurological events in that we experience them neurologically.  It is not surprising that a long-term practitioner of meditation will display a significantly different EEG pattern, or that areas of their brain not normally used will be highlighted in an MRI scan.  Meditation is not altering their consciousness, it is altering their experience of consciousness.  And as a five-year old ’s experience of consciousness is not as developed as a teenager’s or an adult’s, just so, the average person’s experience of consciousness is not generally as developed as that of a longtime practitioner of meditation.  For several thousand years the world’s mystic traditions have all been teaching a very similar program of spiritual realization, regardless of how different their religious and mythological teachings might be.  This is the perennial philosophy, and its continued effectiveness at revealing deeper ways of knowing, is what the transpersonal, or spiritual stages of development, are based on. Wilber makes it clear that he believes each of the stages of development, personal as well as transpersonal, are potentially available to every person and by extension, every society.

There is a strong correlation between the stages of personal and spiritual development and the stages of sociocultural development.  Humans pass through individual stages of development and as societies we seem to pass through these very same stages played out on a larger fashion.  And just as each worldview on the personal level successively embraces a wider perspective, a deeper understanding of the universe, so too do the larger stages that society in general moves through.  It is important to note that each successive stage does not abandon the worldview of the previous stage, but instead transcends it, leaving the individual, or the society, with a successively wider perspective. Different individuals will always be at different stages throughout a society, as the work of Ray and Anderson illustrates, but at most times a single worldview will dominate a society.  Currently our Western society is dominated by the Modern worldview, which tends to have a low regard for the very notion of religion, much less the idea of a transcendent spirituality.  As our society moves slowly toward a more Integral worldview this situation will hopefully change in some radical and significant ways.

 

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