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New World Conditions Catalyze the Evolution of a New World Spirituality – Part 2 by Dr. Marc Gafni

April 1, 2011 2 Comments

 

by Marc Gafni

The Evolutionary Context of World Spirituality

Why? Because the Perennialists made one huge mistake. They intentionally ignored the evolutionary context. Schoun and Smith not only ignore it, they identified and rejected evolution as being the enemy of eternity. In their understandable desire to locate modern man in the ground of eternity, they intuitively viewed the dynamic emergence of evolution as a threat.  This is a huge mistake. Evolution and Eternity are not enemies. Rather, Evolution is the nature of Eternity. Or at least evolution, or what Alfred North Whitehead called Becoming, is One taste of Eternity. Evolution is a mechanism of eternity’s emergent properties as eternity chooses to manifest in the world of time. Evolution is no less than the chosen mechanism of the mystery.

We now realize that everything is evolving, including consciousness itself.

In the language of Kuk, heavily influenced by the old evolutionary teachings of Luria and the Zohar:

The theory of evolution, which is presently conquering the world, is aligned with the most profound secrets of Spirit, more than with any other philosophical theories.

Evolution, which proceeds on an ascending trajectory, provides an optimistic base for the world, for how is it possible to despair when one sees that everything is evolving and ascending?

And when we penetrate the very center of the principle of ascending evolution, we discover that it is the divine principle, which is enlightened with absolute clarity. For it is Infinity in realization which realized itself through bringing infinity from infinite potentiality to infinite actuality.

Evolution enlightens all dimensions of reality, all of God’s manifestations.

All of reality evolves and ascends, as is evident in its parts, and this ascension is general as well as particular.

It rises to the highest peaks of absolute good.

What we now realize, as Kuk, Bergson, Aurobindo, De-Chardin, Gebser and so many others have shown, is that “all dimensions of reality” are evolving. We realize that consciousness itself is developing. Evolution is not the enemy of the mystery. Evolution is the mechanism of the mystery. This is the great paradox and lived koan of evolution and eternity.

The enlightened realization of the Kabbalists, who realized that consciousness itself evolves through us, dramatically influenced Fichte, Schelling, and the other German Idealists who are the modern founders of Evolutionary Spirituality.

But what was an esoteric realization held by an elite few has itself dramatically evolved. We now realize that evolution takes place in the biosphere itself. And the evolution taking place in the biosphere is an expression of the evolution, which is the very nature of all levels of reality. What Kuk understood, we are now able to ground in empirical cross-cultural research–called structuralism–which reveals the unfolding stages of consciousness through human history. We are able today to identify distinct levels in the evolution of Consciousness. as revealed by the cross-cultural research of contemporary developmental theorists including Jean Gebser, Clare Graves, Jean Piaget, Jane Loevinger, Suzanne Cook-Greuter and many more.

Religion and Spirituality are expressions of consciousness. If consciousness is evolving in distinct stages, then it is obvious and readily apparent that religion must be evolving in those very same stages. So it is clear as day that when we say “religion” we need to identify what kind of religion we are talking about. Are we talking about what Jean Gebser called Mythic Religion, or about Rational Religion, Pluralistic Religion, or Integral Religion.

Each one of these levels, or stages of development–mythic, rational, pluralistic, and Integral–refracts the core and profound insights of religion through its own particular level of consciousness. Each one transcends and includes the precious level. Okay, you ask, what does that mean in practical terms?

For the religions at all of these levels, for example, kindness is a core value. There is a clear spiritual obligation to kindness that is expressed at all four of these evolutionary levels of consciousness. But what kindness means differs substantively at each level. The simplest expression of this distinction is that at the mythic level of religion the primary obligation to kindness is limited to those of ones faith community. And while it may be extended to others through this or that method of hermeneutic expansion, the core community of concern remains the particular faith community of which one is a part. A second example: In a wonderfully made home movie on ancient china, which was ruled by mythic religious consciousness, the hero is an enlightened Chinese patriarch who is in a deep love relationship with his consort. At some point in the plot his consort disobeys him. He beats her with a cane, all the while shedding tears but realizing that this is what he must do. When he finishes, she thanks him for his “kindness.” At the mythic level of consciousness, the violation of masculine authority by the feminine was understood to require beating as an appropriate response. And such beating was understood to be an expression of kindness.

At the level of rational religion–when the consciousness of Western Enlightenment comes on line, kindness extends beyond the particular faith community. And because the first wave of proto-feminism began to show its head as one of the expressions of deepening human rights, the notion that a man would beat his wife for disobedience, as an act of kindness, slowly becomes not only absurd but also illegal and actionable. However, at the level of rational religion, sharp distinctions between the genders remain in place, and women are still not equal in any sense. Kindness to the feminine does not include, for example, equal pay for equal time or a host of other basic rights.

At the pluralistic level of religious consciousness kindness extends both beyond narrow faith communities and transcends gender distinctions. Kindness itself has evolved.  However, the pluralistic level of religion, to a large extent, lost the ability to make discernments and penetrating judgments to reflect natural hierarchies between values, lifestyles, moral choices, or forms of government.  All forms of rankings were considered, by definition, unkind or worse. This resulted in a liberal abandonment of values. The tragic upshot is that the religious right per se hijacked values.  Moreover, the sense of spiritual and religious obligation to kindness, and to specific sets of actions that support kindness, was undermined initially in rational religion, and most dramatically in pluralistic levels of spirituality and consciousness. The result again is that self-help and community-based welfare organizations, as part and parcel of an organized community, abound on the religious right, which holds a premodern, largely mythic view of religion. These are almost entirely absent in the fragmented and diffuse community structures of the liberal left, which is rooted, if at all, in rational or pluralistic modes of religion.

It is only at the Integral level of consciousness that kindness evolves once again in a way, which transcends both gender discrimination, as well as the limitations of ethnocentric mythic religion. Moreover, at the Integral level of consciousness the obligation to kindness, both as a general virtue and as it relates to specific acts of kindness, is reclaimed. Indeed it is only at the Integral level of consciousness that a significant post-mythic and post-rational notion of genuine obligation is reclaimed at all.

World Spirituality Transcends and Includes the Perennial Philosophy

 

Said slightly differently, World Spirituality = Perennial Philosophy in an Evolutionary Context, with all that this implies. To spell out all of the implications would take more space than we have available in this communication. But let us at least make some key points on this utterly essential issue.

It might be fairly stated as follows. To suggest that World Spirituality consists of the perennial philosophy–that is to say of the shared truths of the great traditions–is to be almost certain that World Spirituality will be rejected as an evolutionary emergent.

And this is so for two very different reasons.

1. First, if this is what World Spirituality is, the traditions themselves will roundly reject it. If the pre-requisite for an emergent World Spirituality is the abandonment of the traditions in the form of reducing their distinctions to a set of common shared truths, then the traditions themselves will be the fiercest opponents of World Spirituality. Again, for two reasons. First, no one likes to be put out of business. Second and more profoundly, the greatness of the traditions often lies in each ones unique insight, and not in the common truths they share with the other great religions.

Often the perennialist writers and the interfaith proponents of religious perennialism posit as their essential distinction the difference between the depth structure and surface structures of a religion. The argument goes somewhat as follows. The religions differ only in their surface structures, which are determined by the contextual factors of culture and language. Surface structures might include rituals, laws, and specific forms of worship.  Underneath, however, are said to be depth structures, which the religions share in common. Depth structures might include the core worldview of the religion, as well as its ethical and mystical core.  This argument is absolutely true, but partial. There are highly important depth structures that are shared in common to some significant extent both by the mystical and ethical strains of virtually every great religion. This is true. And the gathering of the shared depth structures of the religions was one of the great spiritual projects of the latter half of the twentieth century. Writers such as  Fritz Schuhon, cited above, and those influenced by him, including Aldoxus Huxely, William Stoddard, Gerard Heard, and many others put forth the core shared tenets of the perennial philosophy of religions.

However, and this is a huge however, the differences between the religions are not only rooted in the surface structures of the religions. It is more accurate to say that the religions contain surface structures, on the one hand, and two distinct forms of depth structures, on the other hand. There are, for sure, the depth structures that are shared by all the religions to which the perennialists correctly pointed. However, there are also the depth structures that are singular and distinctly rooted in the deepest well of revelation and contemplative insight that nourishes and sustains the tradition. The distinction between these insights might well be termed the Unique Self of every religion. Unique Self = True Self, which is enlightened consciousness, +  perspective, which is the irreducibly unique perspective of every significant culture.

Buddhism, for example, made huge contributions in understanding and training mind states. Talmudic Judaism made a huge contribution to ethics and social activism in the form of Tikkun Olam, the responsibility to heal and repair the world based on the infinite dignity of every unique self. Christianity made a huge contribution to the evolution and propagation of the biblical teachings on forgiveness. While each of these traditions dealt with significant depth in all of these three areas, it is fair to say that each of these religions was also a specialist, with a highly evolved and unique area of excellence.

Each great tradition has its own radically unique worldview, its own distinct medicine, and its own radically wondrous particular contribution to the music of spirit. It would be precisely accurate to say that each tradition is an instrument in the symphony of spirit. It is not only true that all the instruments produce music much like all the religions intuit and enact spirit. It is also true that each instruments produces utterly unique music just as each religion enacts utterly distinct forms of spiritual expression.  It would be not only ignorance of the most base kind, but tragic, to reduce all the traditions to their shared truths. And the key opponents of this reductionist dishonoring of the religions would be none other then the religions themselves. This cannot be the goal of an evolutionary World Spirituality.

2. But to make the common truths of the great traditions the exclusive or even primary content of World Spirituality would be a monumental mistake for a second reason as well. It is absolutely true that the distinction between the surface structures of the religion and the shared depth structures of every tradition is a crucial insight in the evolution of consciousness and a key part of World Spirituality. This by itself however is woefully insufficient as the core of World Spirituality.  For essentially what that would mean is that World Spirituality is the shared truths of the premodern traditions. In this reading World Spirituality itself would be a regressive movement. It would be regressive because it would suggest that we be guided by a spirituality rooted in the common insights of the of the premodern traditions[1]. That would take us back before modernity and before premodernity, which is exactly where we do not want to go.

Now do not misunderstand this point. The premodern traditions of Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and more are wildly deep on many levels. The premodern traditions are radically profound at a level of interior understanding, which is most likely beyond anything we know today in our interior reaches. The radical inner focus on spirit in the premodern age as well as, some would say, the receptivity to the graces of revelation, yielded a depth of interior vision and knowing which is virtually beyond imagination.

At this same time the mainstream of all these traditions remained premodern in many essential ways which includes ethnocentricity, various forms of the marginalization of the feminine, a lack of historical consciousness, a profound disparity between the elite and the common person, an underdeveloped sense of human rights and much more. Each system at its core thought that its truth was primary, if not exclusive, and that in time history would validate its truth claim as the only authentic truth claim. And it is precisely that form of premodern religion that is once again sweeping the globe with disastrous results, as evidenced in the meteoric rise of fundamentalisms world over.

So to develop a World Spirituality, which shares the best of the pre-modern traditions while a correct evolutionary step in the right direction is certainly not the goal of an emergent and evolving world spirituality.

Rather we want a world Spirituality that shared the best of premodern, modern, and post modern insight. That would be an enormous leap in the evolution of consciousness. Let’s bring on board in World Spirituality, the deepest insights of all the great traditions including all of the great modern and postmodern traditions. This would include the best insights of psychology and psychoanalysis not least of which would recognize and actively engaging what Freud called the unconscious and Jung called the shadow. It would also include fantastic advances in family systems, economics, law, the healing arts, negotiation theory and conflict resolution as well as the best insights of systems and chaos theory.   It would naturally embrace all of the best insights of modern science. It would include critical advances in health care, forms of governances, and human rights. It would include the leading edge understandings in the postmodern disciplines of hermeneutics, phenomenology, metrics and developmental thought.

A World Spirituality of this kind is urgently needed today to heal the fragmentation that lies at the very core of the world’s heart. It is only this kind of leading edge evolutionary emergent, which will have a wide enough embrace to catalyze a shared world commons. It is only from the space of shared world commons that we can write a new source code of human culture rooted in ever-higher levels of mutuality, recognition, union and embrace. It is only such a World Spirituality rooted in such a source code, which will be powerful enough to catalyze the evolution of love. It is only through the evolution of love, which is the evolution of love, which is the evolution of God that we will be able to inspire and write a new Cosmic Scroll. It is only in a new Cosmic Scroll that all the great religions and all the great systems of knowing and doing will have a place and will therefore no longer seek to usurp the place of an other. It is only in the context of such a Cosmic Scroll that every unique human being, will have a dignified, honored and beloved place and peace will ripple across the globe.

[1] Ken Wilber and I just has an awesome and spirited discussion about this precise point, a few days ago as we were engaging in one of a series of regular private dialogues which humbly and tentatively seek to lay the foundation of an emergent World Spirituality. All of the insights that emerge from these dialogues are evolving a vision of a World Spirituality based on Integral Principles. Ken is both a co-catalyst and active leading partner as well as inspiration and in  the emergence of this movement and we are currently preparing a book to formally outline the theoretical underpinning of a World Spirituality based on Integral principles.

Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University and has direct lineage in Kabbalah. He is a Rabbi, spiritual artist, teacher, and a leading visionary in the emerging World Spirituality movement. He is a co-founder of iEvolve: The Center for World Spirituality, a scholar at the Integral Institute, and the director of the Integral Spiritual Experience, as well as a lecturer at John F. Kennedy University. The author of seven books, including the national bestseller Soul Prints and Mystery of Love, Gafni’s teaching is marked by a deep transmission of open heart, love and leading edge provocative wisdom. Gafni is considered by many to be a visionary voice in the founding of a new World Spirituality and one of the great mind/heart teachers of the generation.

What to take this into practice with a community of like-minded integral evolutionaries?

Join us Saturday, April 2nd for First Saturdays. Attend live or via the web!

Schedule

5-6pm Yoga and Meditation with Mariana Caplan and Rosy Moon

6:30-7:45pm World Spirituality Service with Marc Gafni and Decker Cunov

7:45-8:45pm Kirtan with Jai Uttal

8:45-11pm DJ dance party with Neptune

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New World Conditions Catalyze the Evolution of a New World Spirituality – Part 1

March 30, 2011 3 Comments



Dearest Friends,

Wow, what a time it is! The world is in turmoil on virtually every level of reality even as it is pregnant with possibility and promise. The nature of the challenges that we face is, for the first time in the history of the cosmos, global in magnitude. The threat is a global threat to our very survival. The promise is the emergence of a global civilization, one rooted in an evolution of love beyond anything the world has ever seen. We need now, more then ever, a World Spirituality based on Integral principles.

New World Conditions Catalyze the Evolution of a New World Spirituality

The world faces world problems. Gone is the era where local kings, seers, and shamans dealt with their local issues. There are no more exclusively local issues. Everything affects everything else. Everything is interconnected and interdependent.

Of course, from a spiritual perspective, viewed through the eye of the heart and the eye of the spirit, this was always the case. However, the essential interconnectedness of all of reality was not apparent. The King of Burma had no felt sense or evidence that his actions and decision would affect the ancient Indians who populated the Americas.

Now, however, the underlying wholeness of all of reality, the inextricable interpenetration of all of its parts, is becoming visible to the naked eye. One needs to look only at environmental and ecological issues to realize the essential interconnectivity and indivisibility of it all.

New world conditions are always precisely what catalyze the next evolutionary leap. As we realize that the challenges that confront us are world challenges, we realize that we must evolve a World Spirituality to meet those challenges. But not only to meet those challenges.

World spirituality is not just a solution to problems; it is also the delighted expression of the evolving Eros of consciousness realizing its potential to dance in the dialectical tension between unity and diversity. We are unique and autonomous as people and faith systems. We are also One in communion and even union with each other. Both are true. Autonomy and communion, diversity and plurality, the One and the many dance in higher integration as World Spirituality begins to emerge.

Paradoxically it is our very uniqueness, which is the key to our communion. The realization of World Spirituality is that Uniqueness, not merely sameness, is the currency of connection. Each individual and each unique collective expressed in a religion or great body of knowledge is a puzzle piece in the emergent wholeness that is waiting to be evolved by us. Spirit awaits our unpacking. This is the evolutionary impulse manifesting as Spirit in Action. Each tradition has a particular medicine, which is crucial to the health of the whole.

World Spirituality is Not the shared Truth of Premodern Religions

But it is not only the premodern religions that we turn to create world spirituality. Each great system of knowing, premodern, modern, and postmodern, participates in the forging of a World Spirituality. The emergence in modernity of science, of the evolution of the social sphere expressed in the rise of democracy, human rights, and the ascension of the feminine, are all key components in the formation of a World Spirituality. Can you imagine today a serious World Spirituality without taking into account the implications of Neuroscience, what I call Neuro-dharma, are on our understandings of ritual and spiritual practice? Can you imagine today a World Spirituality without the emergent insights of post modernity with its manifestations as multiculturalism and pluralism, without its profound understanding of the distinction between surface structures and depth structures and the role of interpretation and hermeneutics in creating all forms of spiritual and social culture?

Particularly can one imagine World Spirituality without the evolutions that have taken place in our understanding of Evolution? More important than anything, can one imagine a World Spirituality without a profound embrace of the evolutionary context within which we live and which depends on us? The evolutionary context—the realization that consciousness is evolving, and that every generation is responsible for giving its own unique gift to the evolution of consciousness—is the animating Eros in our attempt to give voice and language to the emergence of a World Spirituality that is ALREADY HAPPENING all over the globe.

World Spirituality is Not Interfaith

World Spirituality is not interfaith. It is a major step beyond interfaith that transcends and includes the evolutionary strides made and still being made by that great movement of spirit. If one were to map the stages of spirit’s evolution from the premodern religions to the contemporary emergence of a World Spirituality in which we are participating, they might be something like the following:

1. In the first stage, when the classical religions reigned supreme in the age before the Western Enlightenment, each religion believed that it was supreme or, at the very least, superior to all the other religions. This superiority created in its wake a sense of entitlement, the rationalization for massive oppression, and more often than not, a license to kill. This stage of religious development has been called mythic religion.

2. The second stage emerged with the advent of modernity. Modernity then came along and weakened the authority of the religions by demanding evidence. Moreover, modernity pointed out that many of the propositions which religions had held to be dogmatic truths were, in fact, factually wrong. These ranged from the view of the universe that the church held as dogma, which placed the earth at the center of all things (and was later falsified by Galileo’s telescope), to a dogmatically held belief regarding the structure of the human body (which was falsified by the dissections and autopsies of renaissance science), to the belief in the divine right of kings (which was undermined by the rise of the Western Enlightenment).  Religions were substantively weakened. Secularization began its creeping annexations of the world mind. Within the religions, more progressive voices emerged. However, those voices often sought to remake the religions in the image of modernity, and lost their authentic mooring in the core spiritual matrix of the religion. At the same time, there were those who both opened to modernity and maintained a strong and authentic connection to their core religion without formally working out the contradiction between the two commitments. This stage in the development of spirit has been called rational religion.

3. The third stage is perhaps characterized by the interfaith movement and has been called pluralistic religion. The Interfaith movement made a beautiful contribution in getting people talking to each other from the different faith traditions. This movement itself has two distinct expressions. In one expression, what I will call the humanistic expression, the implicit assumption is that the religions could not be genuinely reconciled at a deep theological level, but if people could just get along at a human level beyond doctrinal difference, this itself would create a mutuality of respect and recognition which would serve to deepen love and lessen religious conflict of all forms. In a second  expression of Interfaith, what I will call the shared truth or perennial expression, the core issues that separated the religions mattered less because the leaders of Interfaith dialogues did not truly take the unique teachings of each of the great traditions, including their own, seriously. Someone once said that the early interfaith dialogues were between Jews who did not believe in Judaism and Christians who did not believe in Christianity—who got together and discovered they had a lot in common.

This expression of the Interfaith movement, however, did make a highly significant contribution to the realization that what we have in common is far greater than what divides us. The crucial developmental insight was that the shared truths in all the religions are their essential teaching. This shared truth both overrides and undercuts the far less important doctrinal, theological, and value distinctions between the religions. The core aspects in the matrix of this highly intelligent and profound interfaith work were and are the key insights of perennial philosophy. The perennialists, led by the like of Fritzof Schuon and his circle of students, and championed effectively and eloquently by Huston Smith, pointed to the essential shared depth structures, which existed in all the traditions. And let it be said clearly. The perennnialist camp and its highly critical insights have made a pivotal contribution towards the evolution of consciousness. And let it be said clearly. The perennial insights are an important part of the emergent World Spirituality.

However, let it be understood no less clearly that the shared perennial truths found in all or most of the great religions are only the first step in the emergence of World Spirituality. Perennial Philosophy is a part, but in no way the whole, of World Spirituality.

With love,

Dr. Marc Gafni

(stay tuned for part 2 later this week!)

Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University and has direct lineage in Kabbalah. He is a Rabbi, spiritual artist, teacher, and a leading visionary in the emerging World Spirituality movement. He is a co-founder of iEvolve: The Center for World Spirituality, a scholar at the Integral Institute, and the director of the Integral Spiritual Experience, as well as a lecturer at John F. Kennedy University. The author of seven books, including the national bestseller Soul Prints and Mystery of Love, Gafni’s teaching is marked by a deep transmission of open heart, love and leading edge provocative wisdom. Gafni is considered by many to be a visionary voice in the founding of a new World Spirituality and one of the great mind/heart teachers of the generation.
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Simplicity Beyond Complexity: The Question Is the Answer (A Reponse to Suffering)

March 29, 2011 Leave a Comment

By Marc Gafni

Part I: The Question

One of the great teachings of the Integral Consciousness, which informs the emergent World Spirituality, is that frameworks matter.

The old world of the great traditions understood this very well. The framework is the meta-narrative, the big picture or worldview, the Great Story through which we interpret our experience.

To date in history there have been three primary Great Stories. The pre-modern story was the story of simplicity, what I would call first simplicity. In terms of depth and interior enlightenment this story was anything but simple in the simple-minded sense of things. It was the greatest interior view of the depths of kosmos, ever disclosed by the great human faculty of perception—the eye of the spirit. It was nonetheless, simplicity, because in large part[1], it claimed to have clear-cut answers to many of the great questions of Who we are, Why we are here, and Where we are going. Particularly it claimed to offer clear and simple explanations of why human beings suffer or said slightly differently, why bad things happen to good people. The Story was painful but simple. Suffering was a direct and clear part of the divine plan which human beings—if they looked deeply enough, were capable of understanding.

The Great Story of the old traditions was rejected by modernity and post modernity. The profound simplicities were undermined and human kind found itself living in vast complexity. First Simplicity was replaced by a new complexity.

Modernity rejected the first simplicity pre-modern story because it overreached claiming to know more then it did. Particularly it claimed absolute “simple” knowledge in all four quadrants instead of where it truly has profound knowing, in the upper left quadrant of the interior consciousness. For example the great traditions made claims about physiology that were falsified by dissections of the human cadaver of the renaissance, claims about astronomy that were falsified by Galileo’s peering through his telescope, and claims about politics that were falsified by the evolution of consciousness that produced democracy and universal human rights. Post modernity rejected the great story of first simplicity because it claimed that it was unconsciously “context bound”. The old truth claims said post modernity was refracted through cultural, historical, social, psychological and political contexts or prism. Look through red glasses and your will see red, But if you do not know you are looking through read glasses you will think you are seeing the world as it is. Postmodernity also pointed out that more then a few of the old historical contexts, which produced religious dogma, were driven not by spirit but by power and domination. As Foucault famously wrote, behind every truth claim there is often a power grab.

Complexity itself, however, over-reached. Scientism overreached no less the great traditions, which it replaced. The shadow move of complexity was the de-storying of the uni-verse. There is No Story said the purveyors of complexity. There is no grand narrative. There is no worldview or big picture within which we can and must live. The Uni-verse shrunk to the universe. Scientism claimed that the only language of the real was the language of the controlled experiment of science. We tended to believe scientism because science produced astonishing breakthrough of knowledge in the knowing of science and mathematics, which together birthed the industrial and technological wonders of modernity and post modernity. But Scientism overreached what it actually knew and disqualified as unreal all knowing in the arenas of meaning, values, ultimate issues, love and depth. All these stories were rejected as being mere imaginings with no ground in the real.

But complexity is not the end of the story. Beyond complexity lies what I will refer to as Second Simplicity. In this movement of spirit seeking to manifest in our time, The Great Story is recovered, reclaimed and evolved at a higher level of consciousness. This is the Second Simplicity of Integral Consciousness.

Integral consciousness fully accepts the critiques of the great traditions leveled by modernity and post modernity. At the same time Integral consciousness re-turns to the great traditions to receive and evolve the dazzlingly subtle and profound frameworks of knowing that emerged from perhaps the greatest set of subtle, speculative and enlightened minds and hearts that ever lived. These hearts and minds collectively produced a context of meaning and framework for living the fullness and depth of every dimension of life that desperately needs to be, both recovered and evolved for our time[2]. These frameworks are the basis of the Second Simplicity. They are simple not in the sense of beings black and white, clear answers to the great questions of meaning. Rather they are simple in the depth and profundity of the frameworks of meaning, which they disclose, invite, and even obligate the human being to live within. It is our job today to transcend and include all of the complexity of modernity and post modernity even as we reach for Second Simplicity.

In this blog we will engage in one small but critical part of the reconstructive project, which seeks the evolutionary recovery of Second Simplicity. Stated clearly, The Second Simplicity of Integral consciousness both emerges from the great traditions even as it includes the best insights of the new great forms of knowing disclosed by modernity and post modernity in all four quadrants. This is the core intention in our commitment to the articulation of a World Spirituality based on Integral principles.

Part Two:

The topic I will engage today presses on every thinking feeling being who is even the slightest bit awake. The topic is how do we engage tragedy and human suffering, both of the man made variety (Auschwitz and the Rwandan genocide) and of the ostensibly natural variety (the earthquake in Japan) without losing our hope, optimism, what we might even call faith, in the essential loving and good nature of All-That-Is.

In engaging this topic I will seek to reclaim a highly subtle and evolved framework for engaging the great question of suffering. It is a framework for Second Simplicity, which transcends and includes both the first simplicity and the complexity.

Like many of us, I have been deep in thought on all of this once again because of the very recent and ongoing tragedy in Japan. It not only overwhelms us with the magnitude of the suffering going on there, it brings us to a huge question, a question that demands deep contemplation and cries out not for an answer that ends the question but for a profound spiritual framework of interpretation in which the great question can be held.

The question is simple. And overwhelming. How do I live from a place of joy and goodness believing in a universe that is not only friendly but loving, in the face of a world filled with both evil and suffering?

In integral consciousness, the consciousness of second simplicity, the answer does not nullify the question. In the old traditions answers were given -called theodicy whose intent was to “explain” suffering based on theological and spiritual explanations. This was the consciousness of first simplicity. In much of modern and post modern thought, from scientism to existentialism, the question was felt to be so impossible to answer, that God was declared dead and the world reduced to a one story flatland universe, ostensibly devoid of the pulsating love intelligence and love beauty of spirit. Humankind was said to live in the hopeless complexity of what Lewis Mumford called a dis-qualified universe. The eye of the spirit atrophied, dominated by the eyes of the flesh and the mind which produced modern science and mathematics. In post post modern integral consciousness of Second Simplicity, we know that there is no answers which can ever nullify the pain of the great question of human suffering. At the same time we have trance-ended the blindness of modern and post modern scientism and re-activated the great faculty of human knowing- the Eye of the Spirit.

From an integral perspective of second simplicity there is no simple answer to why people suffer but there is a profound Response of Spirit to suffering. In this short conversation we will offer one part of that response.

The response does not answer or nullify the question. Rather it appears as a form of Integral reality consideration that probes the inner nature of our relationship to suffering in order to elicit a framework of realization and meaning within which to hold the question. Our certainty lies not in an answer but in the dignity and depth of the framework. One final note. Philosopher Charles Taylor reminds us that we live in “inescapable frameworks”. There is no life lived out of the context of a big picture lens or worldview through which all reality is refracted and interpreted. In pre-modernity that framework was a un self-consciously sure of it’s absolute correctness. Tragically for most moderns and post moderns that framework is the unconscious assumption that the world is ultimately meaningless in any ultimate sense. This is the deadened hope of hopeless complexity that drives post modern man to close his heart and radically narrow her circles of caring. It is in response to that unconscious modern and post assumption of flatland vacuousness that Integral consciousness steps into the void with its great goal of reconstruction and the evolutionary recovery of frameworks of meaning. Second Simplicity.

It is with all that in mind that we will offer a first reality consideration, what the Buddhists might call an analytic meditation on the great problem of pain and suffering. Again not to the metaphysical answer to the Why of suffering but rather a Response to the What and How do we live as alive lovers, incarnating the good, being evolutionary co-catalysts of healing and transformation, in a seemingly hopeless word filled with radical and constant suffering and pain. Just read the news; every single day an unbearable dose of suffering and pain discloses itself to your consciousness. How do you respond without being overwhelmed, losing hope or shutting down?

Part Three: The Response

The response begins by realizing and remembering that in the teaching of some of the great traditions, this question is addressed not only to God, not only to the universe itself, but also to each and every one of us.

To God the question is: How do you, as the just divine source and love intelligence of All That Is, how do you permit suffering? This question is addressed to the God of second person who knows my name and loves me. How do you God allow for human suffering of such horror, intensity and magnitude? Why do you not actively support the consistent manifestation of your nature as the good the true and the beautiful?

To us the question is: What are you/we willing to do for the sake of the good the true and the beautiful? What are you willing to do to end the suffering?

In the western mystical tradition of Kabbalah, there was a profound recognition, and a mandate. The mandate of the western mystical consciousness, especially of the biblical consciousness that underlies the western traditions of ethics is this: a demand that the human being enter into partnership with God in the task of perfecting the world. The classical expression of this in the lineage of Kabbalah is the obligation of Tikkun. Tikkun means not merely to heal or to fix as it is usually translated. In the best reading of the original kabbalistic texts, Tikkun means to be co-creative evolutionary partners with the divine.

This evolutionary mandate to co-create and the heal the world with and as divinity, emerges, paradoxically, not out of answers but out of questions. The fact that the human being can challenge God and that God accepts the human challenge implies a covenantal partnership between the human being and God. Both the human being and God share an understanding of the good, and thus God can turn to the human being and say: ‘I invite you, nay, I demand that you be my partner, my co-creator in the perfection of the world. I began the process of creation; I established the moral fabric of the world. It is up to you to take that cloth and to weave it fully. It is up to you to complete the tapestry, it is up to you to risk to grow and to create a world in which good, love, justice and human dignity flourish and are affirmed.’ A human being who cannot be trusted enough to challenge evil can also not be a partner in fostering the good.

It is true that God very often seems silent in response to our challenge. Yet kabbalistic mystical consciousness, expressed through sacred text and lineage tradition, affirms that God accepts the validity of the question. In doing so God affirms our role as God’s incarnate partner in history. If I am able to recognize evil for what it is, then I am ipso facto obligated in tikkun olam—the obligation to act for and with God in the healing of the world. Man is the language of God. We are God’s adjectives, God’s adverbs, God’s nouns and sometimes-even God’s dangling modifiers. We are God’s vocabulary in the world. When I love, when I am able to be truly vulnerable and intimate with another human being, when I am able to share the pain of another and to rejoice in their deep joy, I am acting for God. I become God’s chariot in the world.

More than this: if I can wrestle with God, if I can express my uncertainty with God in the intimacy of challenging relationship, then paradoxically, I convert my doubt into the core certainty of divine relationship and even incarnation. The Question itself becomes the answer or at least response, as it is the question itself, which implies the intimacy of relationship with the source of goodness, with the love intelligence of All-That-Is.

The authentic existential question shouted out from the depth of being implies—paradoxically—intimacy, relationship and even potential dialogue.

It is to this paradox that we will now turn. We dance in the paradox of certainty and uncertainty. An event like the tsunami is of a different order than the human-made suffering of war and oppression, of a Rwanda or a Bosnia or even a Libya. It’s a natural event; the result of earth processes which don’t take account of the human, but which have their own validity. Nonetheless, when there is death and destruction and social disorder on this scale, it is natural and right and necessary to ask the question:

Where are you, God? Where are you within me and within the world? And here is the great and sacred paradox of realization. Within the very recesses of the uncertainty of the question itself is a powerful experience of certainty and intimate knowing. Knowing of relationship and of the non-dual realization of I Am. It is in I Am, when I experience the core certainty of self, and therefore of my divinity- of my being loved by God. This experience is not only not in contradiction to the question; it wells up from the question itself. In the question is God. The question is the answer.

Two 19th Century Russians

Nachman and Dostoyevsky

It is this paradox that Dostoyevsky in Brothers Karamazov does not fully grasp. He does not understand that the rage of Ivan is the rage of ‘heresy that is faith.’ Ivan, responding to Alyosha’s certainty of belief, has just described to him the brutal murder of a child torn apart by dogs for sport. Ivan’s uncertainty burns with the fiery anger of faith:

Although the passage is longer than what one would usually expect in a quoted text, it is so germane to our theme and so compelling that I did not shorten it. Thus I invite my dear reader to experience the truth and power of Ivan’s plea. He needs to be read as a modern echo of Abraham’s cry “Will the judge of the entire world not do justice?”

I must have justice, or I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I could see myself. I have believed in it. I want to see it, and if I am dead by then, let me rise again, for if it all happens without me, it will be too unfair. Surely I haven’t suffered, simply that I, my crimes and my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else.

I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly understands what it has all been for. All the religions of the world are built on this longing, and I am a believer.

But then there are the children, and what am I to do about them? That’s a question I can’t answer. For the hundredth time I repeat, there are numbers of questions, but I’ve only taken the children, because in their case what I mean is so answerably clear. Listen! If all must suffer to pay for the eternal harmony, what have children to do with it, tell me, please? It’s beyond all comprehension why they should suffer, and why they should pay for the harmony. Why should they, too, furnish material to enrich the soil for the harmony of the future? I understand solidarity in sin among men. I understand solidarity in retribution too, but there can be no such solidarity with children. And if it is really true that they must share responsibility for all their father’s crimes, such a truth is not of this world and is beyond my comprehension.

Some jester will say, perhaps, that the child would have grown up and have sinned, but you see he didn’t grow up; he was torn to pieces by the dogs, at eight years old. Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be, when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.’ When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear.

But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures. You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child’s torturer, ‘Thou art just, O Lord!’ But I don’t want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether.

It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to ‘dear, kind God’! It’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell? I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don’t want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price.

I don’t want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother’s heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony?

Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It’s not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.

A 3,500-year-old text anticipates Ivan. Moses says to God who in the text offers an “explanation of suffering”–‘You have promised to redeem the people in the future- that’s not good enough- for how does that help the babies brutally killed and buried in the mortar of Egyptian brick?’ It is the same with biblical Abraham who demands divine accountability when he cries out “Will the Judge of the Whole World Not Do Justice?”.

The outraged existential challenge, which Ivan, Moses and Abraham hurl against God, is also God’s highest embrace. When we rage like Ivan we affirm the dignity and validity of our rage. We recognize that the rage is holy, welling as it does from the deepest recesses of our being. We refuse to invalidate our core certainty of self and capitulate to the indifference of dogma that denies the uncertainty of evil. We refuse to deny our rage, and in so doing we affirm the holiness of our moral intuitions. In giving voice to our deepest uncertainties, we paradoxically confirm our inner certainty of the divinity in ourselves. Dostoyevsky’s mistake was only that he thought Ivan’s speech to be heresy.

Where Is God?

R. Nachman of Bratzlav in a profound and daring teaching reveals the light shimmering in Alyosha’s speech. It is a teaching on the word ‘Ayeh’. Ayeh in Hebrew means where, in the sense of ‘where is God?

Ayeh encapsulates in one word Alyosha’s entire oration. I want to share with you R. Nachman’s teaching directly, in my trans-interpretation of the original Hebrew text. The bracketed words are my additions:

‘When one follows the path of intellect—(certainty)
one may encounter
multiple mistakes and pitfalls
There are many who fell
and who caused the world to fall
and all through their intellect (false certainty)

….. when you fall into uncertainty
the fall perse
and the descent
are the ultimate ascent.
For all of creation…
derives sustenance
from the ten revealed utterances of creation(certainty)
but the place of the fall
derives sustenance
from the hidden utterance. (uncertainty)
(which is keter)
…in the place of the fall
certainty can give no nourishment
there only the hidden utterance—uncertainty
gives nourishment.
When a person says ‘Ayeh’- where is the place of his glory
when he realizes how distant he is
how deeply he has fallen into uncertainty
this—itself is his fixing

Nachman teaches that in the depth of uncertainty is certainty- the experience of worth, value and being loved. In the anger at evil is the profound intuition that our rage matters- and that it is holy.

Certainty of Rage

Said differently, by holding uncertainty and not settling for explanations of suffering that our soul intuitively rejects- we reach a higher certainty—the certainty of rage. It may well be that in a century that has seen one hundred million people brutally killed- the only path back to God is the certainty of rage.

For our rage and pain is the rage and pain of the divine. Those who deny the holiness of our anger deny God.

Babies are part of our core certainty. They remind us of all that is pure. They somehow cut though our posturing and touch something deep inside us. Have you ever seen a baby brought into an office—no matter how serious the office—grown men and women almost immediately revert to baby talk—to goo goo gaga. Babies cry out for our protection. They call us to rise to our highest selves.

Babies being ripped apart -which was my mother’s youthful vision from the depths of depravity that was the kingdom of the night of Holocaust—Babies being ripped apart destroy that core certainty. “Where Is God” writes Weisel, “he is hanging on the gallows”…. In the body of a young boy. Incarnation is reversed in the horror of suffering. God becomes human and dies on the gallows. In the reversal is the death of God about which some post holocaust theologians wrote with such pathos.

The Biblical mystical response is different. Evolutionary Mystical men and women work their way back to God, not through pious imprecations justifying God nor through pathos filled announcements of God’s demise, but certainty of realization which affirms the sacred character, the divine character of our very pain and rage.

The question itself–Where is God?–in all of it’s power, becomes the answer itself. Or at least the response. It is in the intimacy of relationship and realization that is implicit in the full living of the question that the Second Simplicity is achieved. Second Simplicity is not an answer to a metaphysical Why to an affirmation of the Who. Who am I? I Am. Who am I; I am a child of a Uni-verse in which my question matters and therefore I am never alone and never abandoned even in the face of unanswerable mystery. Everywhere I fall I fall into God’s hands. I am in every moment held by the love intelligence and love beauty and love goodness of All-That-Is. This is felt knowing implicit in the question itself. This is all paradoxically implicit in the certainty that my anger and even raging against all suffering is no less then a fractal of the voice of God.

—————————————————-

[1] In large part but not entirely. Within the pre-modern great traditions there were always voices of spirit, which reached beyond the pre-modern simplicity and offered significant post post moderns of spirit, which we need to recover, reconstruct and evolve as the foundation of an evolutionary -world -spirituality.

[2] On the post metaphysical nature of that evolution we will devote a separate discussion in a future blog post. See Wilber, Integral Spirituality, Appendix Two to being the conversation.

Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University and has direct lineage in Kabbalah. He is a Rabbi, spiritual artist, teacher, and a leading visionary in the emerging World Spirituality movement. He is a co-founder of iEvolve: The Center for World Spirituality, a scholar at the Integral Institute, and the director of the Integral Spiritual Experience, as well as a lecturer at John F. Kennedy University. The author of seven books, including the national bestseller Soul Prints and Mystery of Love, Gafni’s teaching is marked by a deep transmission of open heart, love and leading edge provocative wisdom. Gafni is considered by many to be a visionary voice in the founding of a new World Spirituality and one of the great mind/heart teachers of the generation.
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Which Instrument are You in the World Spirituality Symphony?

March 15, 2011 Leave a Comment

by Marc Gafni & Mariana Caplan

Below are a few thoughts we would like to share in simple and clear terms in regard to why evolving a World Spirituality is the urgent need and great adventure of our time. We have jotted these thoughts down, also catalyzed by in depth conversations with Ken Wilber and Tami Simon who we are working closely in catalyzing, articulating, and serving the emergence of the an authentic World Spirituality that has the potential to provide a context of meaning for hundreds of millions of people. This is a work in progress, but here are some preliminary thoughts.

Let us begin with a bold and audacious statement—not on our personal behalf but on behalf of an incredible group of committed individuals from around the world who are coming together to catalyze and incarnate a new movement of spirit: World Spirituality. We believe that we are being called to articulate a vision of World Spirituality that speaks compellingly to the hundreds of millions of people who have moved beyond the religions or beyond exclusive identification with any one tradition. We believe that this may be one of the vital next moves in the evolution of consciousness.

We believe that World Spirituality is a desperately needed unifying principle which remembers and reminds us that what unites us is so much greater then what divides us.

Before we go any further, however, we must state clearly and unequivocally that if unifying means leveling of differences which so often characterized the early ecumenical movements, then this word can and does not describe the impetus of world spirituality. World Spirituality is emphatically not, in any sense or form, a World Religion.

World Spirituality is more like a symphony. In the symphony there are many instruments. Each one is sacred. Each one has its unique music. Each contributes a particular texture and depth of sound to the symphony. But all of the instruments are playing music. No instrument can claim to be the music itself. Each one bows before the lord of music.  In that general sense, World Spirituality engages the world’s religions as well as the great wisdom traditions—ancient, modern and post-modern.

Each instrument plays a unique and gorgeous sound. Each often has a unique medicine or insight. By ancient traditions we refer primarily to the great systems of religion and philosophy. By modern traditions we might refer, for example, to neuroscience, or to the various schools of psychology. By post-modern traditions we refer to the insights of deconstructionist writers, phenomenology and some of the social sciences.  Each great tradition has insights in a particular area. Each has a particular medicine that we need. Each also sometimes overreaches in its claim that its particular insight is the whole story. The part pretends to be a whole and is  rightly critiqued for its overreach with the tragic result that the baby is often thrown out with the bathwater.

World Spirituality seeks to be in dialogue with all of the great traditions and articulate a framework in which all of the traditions have an honored place at the table and can benefit from the insights of each. The job of World Spirituality is to try and cogently articulate a big picture in which a person might be able to find himself or herself in order to locate themselves in a context of meaning and purpose.

In the current situation, many people at the leading edge who are born into the post-modern world unconsciously assimilate its critiques of the great traditions. If they remain with the wish to engage spirit at all, they are then left to meander along trying to find their way. They are confused and unable to orient themselves to a genuine worldview of meaning that compels, delights, and infuses their every day life with meaning and direction.

World Spirituality speaks equally to the hundreds of millions of cultural creatives around the world who feel that they cannot locate themselves in a tradition at all; as we as those firmly ensconced in a tradition who might feel that their identify and hunger is not exhausted by that tradition. They experience themselves as dual citizens—deeply involved in their tradition but also art of the broader global community of spirit at the same time.

In World Spirituality one of our key goals it create a series of writings that might help seekers feel like they have some direction and gentle guidance on the way, which helps them to identify: What are the issues that need addressing? What are the general forms or types of practice that need to be engaged in order to live an integrated life on the spiritual path of life? In a sense, we would like to help people cultivate discernment as they try and find their way grounded in spirit on a genuine path of obligation and freedom.

There are five important reasons why a World Spirituality is both possible and necessary today  in way that it was never was before in history:

To begin with, for the first time in history, the core challenges to survival that we face today are not local to a particular religion, country or region. They are world challenges, ranging from the very real threats to the ground we walk on and the air we breathe, to world hunger, to the danger or nuclear weapons falling into the hands of a rogue state, to the most pressing issues of social and economic justice. There is no place left to hide in the word, and the old spiritual truths of the essential oneness of everything, the interconnectivity of it all, is no longer a hidden teaching but an obvious truth for all to see.

Next, whenever new life conditions come to pass, a new evolutionary leap in consciousness and culture is required to meet them. The global challenges we face require the evolution of a new spiritual consciousness in which we realize that what unites us is so much greater then what divides us: a World Spirituality.

Thirdly, for the first time in history there is a critical mass of people who have reached World-Centric consciousness. These people have expanded their circle of caring and concern beyond their ethnocentric affiliations. They are at home in the world and feel responsible for the world as whole and not merely for their country or religion.

Fourthly, for the first time in history the most profound teachings as well as living teachers from all the great systems of spirit are readily available in non-coercive and open hearted form, not only to people of that particular religion, but to all who would come to study and practice.

Finally, for the first time in history the notion of dual citizen is readily understood and available. Not only can one be a dual citizen of two countries, but it is possible to remain committed to one’s native or chosen spiritual tradition while at the same time being a citizen of World Spirituality.

For the first time in history there are hundreds of millions of well-educated people who, although they cannot find their homes in the traditional religions, are searching for a compelling universal set of spiritual principles by which they can live their lives.

Mission Statement:

Evolving a World Spirituality is the urgent need and great adventure of our time.

The yearning to articulate a World Spirituality is rippling across the globe in the hearts and minds of tens of millions of people. For some people, the classical religions have lost their power. They seek a path of practice and commitment that transcends the traditions. For others, their intuitive desire is to transcend and include the traditions. They seek to live as dual citizens, rooted in their tradition, even as they locate themselves as citizens in the broader community of World Spirituality.

A World Spirituality based on Integral Evolutionary principles, rooted in the shared truths held to be self-evident by all great systems of spirit and gnosis across historical time is urgently needed at this moment in history. Evolving an authentic life rooted in commitment and freedom articulated and lived in the principles and practices of World Spirituality is the next great step in spirit’s unfolding.

The Center for World Spirituality is writing a series of groundbreaking books and creating new templates for spiritual practice, education, and community. The templates are at once rooted in the past, present, and future. Welling up from an integration of the leading-edge emergent evolutionary insights taught by spirituality, psychology, and the sciences, World Spirituality paves the way for the next stage of evolution, seeding the ground of hope that is our collective memory of the future.

The Center for World Spirituality intends to function primarily as an academic and public policy action think-tank. Its aim is to catalyze, host, and evolve the trans-lineage conversation within the Integral, Evolutionary and broader spiritual and cultural communities with the clear intent of humbly and audaciously participating in the evolution of consciousness. We believe World Spirituality is necessary for the next stage of humanity’s evolution. Let it be so!

Mariana Caplan, PhD, is a psychotherapist, professor of yogic and transpersonal psychologies, and the author of seven books in the fields of psychology and spirituality, including the forthcoming: The Guru Question: The Perils and Awards of Choosing a Spiritual Teacher and the seminal Halfway Up the Mountain: the Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment. Her recent release, Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path, won five national awards for best spiritual book of 2010. She has spent 20 years researching cutting edge and controversial topics in Western Spirituality, and focuses her consultation and psychotherapy practice on somatic approaches to healing trauma and spiritual issues. She is the co-founder of The Center for World Spirituality and an adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies and Naropa University. She has degrees in cultural anthropology, counseling psychology, and contemporary spirituality, and is a teacher and practitioner of yoga philosophy and asana. 

 

Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University and has direct lineage in Kabbalah. He is a Rabbi, spiritual artist, teacher, and a leading visionary in the emerging World Spirituality movement. He is a co-founder of iEvolve: The Center for World Spirituality, a scholar at the Integral Institute, and the director of the Integral Spiritual Experience, as well as a lecturer at John F. Kennedy University. The author of seven books, including the national bestseller Soul Prints and Mystery of Love, Gafni’s teaching is marked by a deep transmission of open heart, love and leading edge provocative wisdom. Gafni is considered by many to be a visionary voice in the founding of a new World Spirituality and one of the great mind/heart teachers of the generation.
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Welcome to iEvolve: Center for World Spirituality!

March 5, 2011 7 Comments

Dearest friends,

It’s official!

iEvolve and the Center for World Spirituality have joined forces in a seamless and beautiful integration and we are proud to present iEvolve: Center for World Spirituality.

iEvolve: Center for World Spirituality (CWS) aims to become a proactive, socially-engaged organization of leading edge spiritually-motivated thought and action, seeking to combine the best functions of a think tank with the dynamism of a social activist movement.

Below are a few thoughts that I want to share in simple and clear terms in regard to why evolving a World Spirituality is the urgent need and great adventure of our time. I jotted these thoughts down together with Mariana Caplan, Ken Wilber, and Tami Simon, with who I am working closely in catalyzing, articulating, and serving the emergence of the an authentic World Spirituality that has the potential to provide a context of meaning for hundreds of millions of people. This is a work in progress. Here are some first thoughts…

We believe that the cogent articulation of a World Spirituality that speaks compellingly to the hundreds of millions of people who are already at World-Centric consciousness may well be the most important next move that we can make in the evolution of consciousness.

1. For the first time in history, the core challenges to survival we face today are not local to a particular religion, country, or region. They are world challenges, ranging from the very real threats to the ground we walk on and the air we breathe, to world hunger, to the danger of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of a rogue state, to the most pressing issues of social and economic justice. There is no place left to hide, and the spiritual truth of the interconnectedness of all things is no longer an hidden teaching but an obvious truth. Whenever new life conditions come to pass, an evolutionary leap in consciousness and culture is required to meet them. The global challenges we face require the evolution of a new spiritual consciousness in which we realize that what unites us is so much greater then what divides us: we need a World Spirituality.

2. For the first time in history, there is a critical mass of at least two hundred million people who have reached Worldcentric consciousness. These people have expanded their circle of caring and  concern beyond their ethnocentric affiliations. They are at home in the world and feel responsible for the world as whole, and not merely their country or religion.

3. For the first time in history, the most profound teachings as well as living teachers from all the great systems of spirit are readily available in a non-coercive and open-hearted form, not only to people of their particular religion, but to all who wish to come to study and practice with them.

4. For the first time in history, the notion of dual citizenship is readily understood and available. Not only can one be a dual citizen of two countries, but one can also remain committed to their native or chosen spiritual tradition, while at the same time being a citizen of World Spirituality.

5. For the first time in history, there are hundreds of millions of well educated people who, although they cannot find their homes in the traditional religions, are searching for a compelling universal set of spiritual principles by which they can live their lives.

The few short lines below are a first take at the mission statement of Center for World Spirituality.

The yearning to articulate a World Spirituality is rippling across the globe in the hearts and minds of tens of millions of people. For some people, the classical religions have lost their power. They seek a path of practice and commitment that transcends the traditions. For others, their intuitive desire is to transcend and include the traditions. They seek to live as dual citizens, rooted in their tradition, even as they locate themselves as citizens in the broader community of World Spirituality.

A World Spirituality based on the shared truths held to be self-evident by all  great systems of spirit and gnosis across historical time is urgently needed at this moment in history. Evolving an authentic life rooted in commitment and freedom articulated and lived in the principles and practices of World Spirituality is the next great step in spirit’s unfolding.

The Center for World Spirituality is writing a series of groundbreaking books and creating new templates for spiritual practice, education, and community. The templates are at once rooted in the past, present, and future. Welling up from an integration of the leading-edge emergent evolutionary insights taught by spirituality, psychology, and the sciences, World Spirituality paves the way for the next stage of evolution, seeding the ground of hope that is our collective memory of the future.

Thank you for reading.

With huge love,

Marc Gafni

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Unique Self and Levels of Consciousness with Don Beck, Katherine Woodward Thomas, & Marc Gafni

February 25, 2011 Leave a Comment

In this lively dialogue, Don Beck, Katherine Woodward Thomas, and Dr. Marc Gafni explore the relationship between Unique Self and Levels of Consciousness. Dr. Marc begins with an introduction to his latest teaching, Unique Self, and defines for us the differences between Unique Self and True Self. The dialogue takes a deeper dive as Don, Katherine, and Marc take a journey up and down the spiral and look at Unique Self as it expresses itself through the different levels of consciousness. If you’re ready to take the next step on your Unique Self journey, then this dialogue is for you!




Unique Self and Levels of Consciousness

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Duration 69 min 

Don Beck

Don Beck has been developing, implementing, and teaching the evolutionary theory of Spiral Dynamics for more than three decades. Beck has elaborated upon the work of his mentor, Clare Graves, to develop a multidimensional model for understanding the evolutionary transformation of human values and cultures.


Katherine Woodward Thomas

Katherine Woodward Thomas a national bestselling author of Calling in “The One”: 7 Weeks to Attract the Love Of Your Life (Three Rivers Press, 2004) and creator and lead coach of the highly acclaimed Calling in “The One” 7 week transformative process. She is also a licensed psychotherapist, public speaker and the co-creator and co-leader of the Feminine Power transformative courses and the Feminine Power Global Community, a thriving learning community serving thousands of women worldwide.

Dr. Marc Gafni

Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University. He is an iconoclastic teacher of Kabbalah and World Spirituality. He is the director of Integral Spiritual Experience. He is a core founder and faculty member of iEvolve: Global Practice Community. In 2011, Dr. Marc officially launched the Center for World Spirituality as the founder and spiritual director in San Francisco, CA.
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Obstacles to Unique Self with Don Beck and Marc Gafni

February 21, 2011 Leave a Comment

What are the obstacles to realizing your Unique Self? As one makes the leap from True Self to Unique Self, what are some of the common pitfalls spiritual practitioners encounter along the way? And how can we navigate these obstacles more skillfully and with more discernment? In this audio dialogue between Don Beck, Founder of Spiral Dynamics and Dr. Marc Gafni, spiritual teacher and founder of iEvolve, Marc explores with us the many obstacles one may cross on the Unique Self journey.









Obstacles to Unique Self

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Duration: 17 min


Don Beck has been developing, implementing, and teaching the evolutionary theory of Spiral Dynamics for more than three decades. Beck has elaborated upon the work of his mentor, Clare Graves, to develop a multidimensional model for understanding the evolutionary transformation of human values and cultures.

Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University. He is an iconoclastic teacher of Kabbalah and World Spirituality. He is the director of Integral Spiritual Experience. He is a core founder and faculty member of iEvolve: Global Practice Community. In 2011, Dr. Marc officially launched the Center for World Spirituality as the founder and spiritual director in San Francisco, CA.

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World Spirituality: Spirit’s Next Move?

February 3, 2011 1 Comment

Tami Simon speaks with Marc Gafni, a rabbi and teacher of Kabbalah and World Spirituality. Marc speaks about love as the motivational force in the universe. He also discusses a new and important emerging topic, that of World Spirituality, and the possibility of creating a shared context of meaning between all the faith traditions of the world. If you’re interested in World Spirituality, this dialogue is for you!
 
 
 
 
World Spirituality: Spirit’s Next Move

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Tami Simon is the founder of Sounds True, a multi-media publisher dedicated to disseminating spiritual wisdom. Over their 22 year history, Sounds True has produced over 600 titles, been nominated twice for the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing companies, and is North America’s leading publisher of spoken-word spiritual teachings.
 
Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University and has direct lineage in Kabbalah. He is a Rabbi, spiritual artist, teacher, and a leading visionary in the emerging World Spirituality movement. He is a co-founder of iEvolve: The Center for World Spirituality, a scholar at the Integral Institute, and the director of the Integral Spiritual Experience, as well as a lecturer at John F. Kennedy University.

 

Full Audio Transcript

Tami Simon: You’re listening to “Insights at the Edge.” Today my guest is Marc Gafni. Marc is a rabbi and a teache of Kabbalah. He’s the author of several books, including The Mystery of Love, as well as the national bestseller, Soul Prints. In addition to an audio learning edition of Soul Prints, Sounds True will be releasing Marc’s newest book, Your Unique Self: The Future of Enlightenment.

In this episode of “Insights at the Edge,” Marc and I spoke about love as the motivational force in the universe. We also discussed a new, important, emerging topic, that of World Spirituality, and the possibility of creating a shared context of meaning between all of the faith traditions of the world. Here’s my conversation with Marc Gafni.

So today I want to talk about World Spirituality, which I know is a subject you’ve been deeply engaged in, studying, quite a lot, and speaking about more and more. So to begin with, what do you mean by World Spirituality?

Marc Gafni: The mystics, Tami, talk about via negativa, which is what it’s not. Sometimes we’re not sure what something is, but we know what it’s not. So let me just start with what it’s not. It’s not a world religion; it’s not a new form of Baha’i. It’s not a reducing of all the religions or losing of them. So that’s what it’s not.

It’s an evolutionary step. And it’s not interfaith; it’s beyond that step of interfaith when, as someone once said, Jews who don’t believe in Judaism get together with Christians who don’t believe in Christianity, and discover they have a lot in common. So it’s not a kind of reduction of interfaith, and it’s not a kind of homogenization that we’re all one, which is another form of domination, “Let’s create a new dominating world religion,” which is kind of scary. So that’s the mystical move of “We can’t talk about God, but we know what God’s not.” So that’s what it’s not.

So now what is it? What is its life-positive quality? So a World Spirituality is the understanding that there’s a deep, shared vision held by all the great traditions, both the spiritual traditions, the psychological traditions, the great traditions of knowing in the world, that if you link them together, and you take the best strength of each one, the best medicine of every tradition, and you link them together into a larger necklace, into a larger symphony, where each instrument plays its music to perfection, you get something that actually unites us. You get a shared context of meaning that we’re all living in.

And the goal of a World Spirituality is to address a world in which the leading edge of the world—the opinion-makers, the hundreds of millions of people living at certain levels of prosperity who are creating the future—are actually, to a large extent, living in a context of meaninglessness, of no ultimate sense of value, no ultimate sense of purpose, no ultimate sense of “Why am I here, and where am I going?” And when that happens, the center doesn’t hold. For the first time in the history of the human race, the leading edge of the world is living without a kind of moral, spiritual context, because they have in some sense internalized the critique of religion, which was so devastating in the last few hundred years. And so the context becomes a flatland context, without depth, without quality.

So a World Spirituality seeks to say, “Beyond all the dogmas, what’s the deep understanding of knowing that we have, of the nature of what is, what we’re doing here in the world, how to be kind to each other? What is it that unites us that’s so much greater than anything that divides us?” And that’s what a World Spirituality is seeking to articulate. [read more]

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Integral Love Meditation

December 18, 2010 1 Comment

Love is more than just a feeling. Enlightened teachers through the ages have told us that love is the dynamic ground of all reality. If that’s true, then love can be seen as the actual force that drives evolution—the force the Greeks called Eros—as well as the enlivening joy that opens the heart.

So what is love, when we see it from both a personal and an evolutionary perspective? How do we find it, nurture it, and sustain it?

In this Integral Love Meditation, Dr. Marc Gafni guides us through the heart-gate of love and invites us to engage in a new Integral Love Practice.

Integral Love Meditation
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Duration: 11 min
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Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University. He is a rabbi and an iconoclastic teacher of Kabbalah and World Spirituality. He is the co-director of the Integral Life Spiritual Center and Integral Spiritual Experience. He is a core founder and faculty member of iEvolve: Global Practice Community.
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Turning the Bitter into the Sweet: Next Steps of Spirit

December 3, 2010 Leave a Comment

In this three-part audio series, Lama Surya Das, Sally Kempton, and Dr. Marc Gafni engage in an exciting and cutting-edge dialogue on Turning the Bitter into the Sweet. In part two, Lama Surya Das explores with us the Next Steps of Spirit.

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Lama Surya Das is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars. Surya Das teaches and lectures around the world, conducting dozens of meditation retreats and workshops each year.


Sally Kempton, formerly known as Swami Durgananda, is recognized as a powerful meditation guide and as a spiritual teacher who integrates yogic philosophy with daily life. She is the author of The Heart of Meditation, and writes the popular Wisdom column for Yoga Journal.


Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University. He is a rabbi and an iconoclastic teacher of Kabbalah and World Spirituality. He is the co-director of the Integral Life Spiritual Center and Integral Spiritual Experience. He is a core founder and faculty member of iEvolve: Global Practice Community.

Filed Under: Audio, Lama Surya Das, Marc Gafni, Marc Gafni Teachings, Sally Kempton Tagged With: , ,

What is the Separate Self?

October 20, 2010 Leave a Comment


In this video teaching, Dr. Marc Gafni defines with his students during his annual five-day Urban Retreat in the Summer of 2010, the notion of Separate Self. What is the Separate Self? How do we know our True Self? Marc Gafni introduces and explains that each person is a skin encapsulated ego (to borrow the phrase) and needs to move beyond one’s Separate Self towards one’s True Self, ultimately realizing one’s Unique Self.
[box style="rounded" border="full"]Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University. He is a rabbi and an iconoclastic teacher of Kabbalah and World Spirituality. He is the co-director of the Integral Life Spiritual Center and Integral Spiritual Experience. He is a core founder and faculty member of iEvolve: Global Practice Community. [/box]

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Surrender to Your Beloved

September 28, 2010 Leave a Comment

Surrender to your beloved in this lively dialogue with Terry Patten and Dr. Marc Gafni as they discuss The 2nd Face of God. There are innumerable ways to conceptualize God, Spirit, or the Divine. These can be broken down into three basic perspectives – first-person, second-person, and third-person views of God, Spirit, or the Divine. The recognition that manifest reality is fundamentally comprised of perspectives, or different lenses from which to view reality, does a great deal to transform our relationship to religion and spirituality. Here, Terry and Dr. Marc focus on the second-person perspective of God as they discuss intimacy with your own beloved. Tune in and share your perspectives. How do you surrender? How do you surrender to your beloved? And how do you discern when it is appropriate to surrender?

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Terry Patten is a Certified Integral Coach and a co-author of the book Integral Life Practice. He has worked for many years with Ken Wilber and Integral Institute. He is committed to serving the emergence of Integral consciousness—by writing and educating, and by helping conscious individuals and organizations negotiate extraordinary transitions.[/box]

[box style="rounded" border="full"]Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University. He is a rabbi and an iconoclastic teacher of Kabbalah and World Spirituality. He is the co-director of the Integral Life Spiritual Center and Integral Spiritual Experience. He is a core founder and faculty member of iEvolve: Global Practice Community.[/box]

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A New Model of the Student-Teacher Relationship

September 22, 2010 9 Comments

I think those of us on the spiritual path could agree that the student-teacher relationship deserves an upgrade, not only for the 21st century practitioner-student, but also for the 21st century spiritual teacher. In this video, Dr. Marc Gafni shares with us the possibility of a new model of the student-teacher relationship. What characteristics do you think should be included in a new model of the student-teacher relationship for the 21st century?

Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University. He is a rabbi and an iconoclastic teacher of Kabbalah and World Spirituality. He is the director with Ken Wilber, Sally Kempton and Diane Hamilton of the Integral Life Spiritual Center and core founder and faculty member of iEvolve: Global Practice Community. He has written seven books, including the national bestseller Soul Prints, and The Mystery of Love, an exploration of the relationship between the sexual, the erotic, and the sacred. Gafni is considered by many to be a visionary voice in the founding of a new World Spirituality.

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Turning the Bitter into the Sweet: Following the Darkness to the Light

September 18, 2010 2 Comments

In this three-part audio series, Lama Surya Das, Sally Kempton, and Dr. Marc Gafni engage in an exciting and cutting-edge dialogue on Turning the Bitter into the Sweet. In part three, Dr. Marc Gafni explores with us Following the Darkness to the Light.



Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University. He is a rabbi and an iconoclastic teacher of Kabbalah and World Spirituality. He is the director with Ken Wilber, Sally Kempton and Diane Hamilton of the Integral Life Spiritual Center and core founder and faculty member of iEvolve: Global Practice Community. He has written seven books, including the national bestseller Soul Prints, and The Mystery of Love, an exploration of the relationship between the sexual, the erotic, and the sacred. Gafni is considered by many to be a visionary voice in the founding of a new World Spirituality.

Sally Kempton, formerly known as Swami Durgananda, is recognized as a powerful meditation guide and as a spiritual teacher who integrates yogic philosophy with daily life. She is the author of The Heart ofMeditation, and writes the popular Wisdom column for Yoga Journal. A teacher in the tantric tradition of Kashmir Shaivism Sally conducts conducts workshops and retreats on applied philosophy and meditation. She is also a core founder and faculty of iEvolve: Global Practice Community.

Lama Surya Das is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars. Surya Das teaches and lectures around the world, conducting dozens of meditation retreats and workshops each year. Based on his relationship with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Surya Das founded the Western Buddhist Teachers Network and has organized three week-long conferences of Western Buddhist Meditation Teachers with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India.

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Filed Under: Audio, Lama Surya Das, Marc Gafni, Marc Gafni Teachings, Sally Kempton Tagged With: , , , ,

Turning the Bitter into the Sweet: The Path of Hindu Tantra

September 18, 2010 2 Comments


In this three-part audio series, Lama Surya Das, Sally Kempton, and Dr. Marc Gafni engage in an exciting and cutting-edge dialogue on Turning the Bitter into the Sweet. In part one, Sally Kempton explores with us the Path of Hindu Tantra.

Sally Kempton, formerly known as Swami Durgananda, is recognized as a powerful meditation guide and as a spiritual teacher who integrates yogic philosophy with daily life. She is the author of The Heart ofMeditation, and writes the popular Wisdom column for Yoga Journal. A teacher in the tantric tradition of Kashmir Shaivism Sally conducts conducts workshops and retreats on applied philosophy and meditation. She is also a core founder and faculty of iEvolve: Global Practice Community.

Dr. Marc Gafni holds his doctorate from Oxford University. He is a rabbi and an iconoclastic teacher of Kabbalah and World Spirituality. He is the director with Ken Wilber, Sally Kempton and Diane Hamilton of the Integral Life Spiritual Center and core founder and faculty member of iEvolve: Global Practice Community. He has written seven books, including the national bestseller Soul Prints, and The Mystery of Love, an exploration of the relationship between the sexual, the erotic, and the sacred. Gafni is considered by many to be a visionary voice in the founding of a new World Spirituality.

Lama Surya Das is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars. Surya Das teaches and lectures around the world, conducting dozens of meditation retreats and workshops each year. Based on his relationship with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Surya Das founded the Western Buddhist Teachers Network and has organized three week-long conferences of Western Buddhist Meditation Teachers with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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