R/Evolution Be Upon Us

"A revolution is upon us", says Alan Wallace, stemming from the exploration of consciousness and the mind, using direct, immediate, first-hand observation -- meditation. "A new axial age", says Karen Armstrong, so that "once again, a radical change has become necessary." Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber take a strong position on this issue and say we must be willing to break the rules. An excerpt:

AC: To dare to even speak about radical transformation, let alone call other people to a higher level, is against the unstated rules. And of course, one's definitely going to be put in one's place for doing something like that. But unless the possibility of genuine transformation is actually declared, unless one is willing to demonstrate it publicly and to call other people to the same, no one is even going to know that it's possible. And then unknowingly, everybody's going to be participating in the conspiracy of mediocrity.

KW: Yes, the conspiracy of mediocrity, which is basically the conspiracy to express your ego instead of transcending it or letting go of it. The idea is "If I can really emote and express my self-contraction with sincerity, I'm somehow spiritual." So then we have a convention of the self-contractions, and that's basically boomeritis spirituality. It's a problem, to put it mildly. And it's a concern to me that a lot of teachers actually embrace that kind of postmodern flatland pluralism.

AC: Well, I think that part of the reason for that is that many people are teaching now who actually have had little if any enlightenment experience or satori themselves. And if one is a teacher and yet has little authentic experience on which to base one's teaching, one is going to end up being in the kind of position you described.

KW: I think that's certainly part of the picture. Another part of the picture, which concerns me even more, is that I know some teachers who have had a very strong satori, but they still interpret it through the mental apparatus that they have in place. And so they interpret it through boomeritis, the mean green meme, pluralistic flatland. And that, frankly, is extremely unsettling.

This subject of an emerging spirituality at the beginning of the 21st century, and the obvious obstacles to its unfolding, is definitely an extremely important one. Not just for those of us in the postmodern West, but equally for those who are backstroking everywhere in an attempt to preserve some semblance of value and purpose. In Western Buddhist circles little is done to stir this awareness and discussion of an emerging, radically sane spiritual culture, as if we are less-then-confident in the potential of teachings if we acknowledge that something unprecedented and unpredicted is taking place, something not to be found in sutras and tantras of old, except as a hint that nothing ever stays the same, including both the teachings and our purpose for realizing and manifesting enlightenment. As we know all too well, the world does not wait. Something new is being born, right now.

Now, this newborn has a human face. As Rumi invoked for all of us, this newborn is "not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or Zen". This makes the Newborn somewhat uninteresting for those of us who believe that preserving the legacy is of utmost importance, as well as for those who believe that doing away with the essence of that legacy - namely, the ever-fresh discovery of freedom - is even possible. However, this Newborn is in all probability our only chance of seeing this century bloom in terms of a global civilization. This new expression of our common Ground, informed by a sharp evolutionary awareness and demanding clear action and a rational way of being beyond any vestige of self-righteousness, is the only true fountain of inspiration for not just a sustainable but also creative future. Ethically, philosophically, and spiritually, this impersonal Newborn needs mature human beings as agents in every conceivable form and then some.

As Robert Godwin says, in an interview to WIE,

there is not just one but four unaccountable singularities in existence—Matter, Life, Mind, and Spirit—that mark the unfolding of new dimensions in the cosmos. At each of these levels of evolution, there’s a deepening interiority. That’s the vertical dimension. It’s the deepening interior of the cosmos. Each is in its own way a bang, a unique one-of-a-time warp between what was before and what came after. The first bang goes from nothing to a very exquisitely ordered something. With the second bang, we go from a dead universe to a living universe. That’s pretty bizarre. With the third singularity, we go from a living universe to a thinking and creating universe that mirrors the creator. That’s very bizarre. And then the most bizarre is the fourth singularity when we human beings have the spiritual revelation, “Aha! I am That,” which is very unexpected.

And then points further,

How do ironists find something that they revere and don’t just mock and look down upon? How do you make them look up? That’s the trick. [...] In some form or fashion, you have to find something that you spontaneously bow to, that you revere. And it can’t be something lower. It can’t just be Gaia. It’s got to be something higher that you recognize as such that makes you fall to your knees spontaneously. [...] Look at the external movement of human evolution, going out of Africa and into Europe, then crossing the Atlantic, then coming to the East Coast of the United States, and then slowly migrating into the frontier—to the West Coast. Then the frontier closes. By the 1890s, there is nothing left. That’s when the interior journey really starts on a cultural level. You start seeing postmodern people like James Joyce, Einstein, Picasso. All of a sudden, you see much more focus on the interior as the new frontier. We are now just beginning to explore that interior frontier. That’s what’s so exciting about it. People long for that old frontier: “Oh, gosh, I wish I could go live on the frontier again.” But the frontier is here and now. The interior frontier is here, ready to be conquered and explored and inhabited. It’s so exciting. We’re on this incredible interior journey now, and we’re finding out that this is the only journey that is or has ever been. Because for us, the exterior frontier was actually an interior frontier all along. It was a longing for new horizons, for new experiences. All along it was that. But now we don’t have the inconvenience of the material world to worry about. We don’t have to “Go west, young man.” Now it’s “Go in and go up. Become inwardly mobile.” That’s the real journey and the next evolution.

How do you resonate with that?