Library » Integral » The New Person-Centered Civil Religion
Excerpted from One Taste
by Ken Wilber
Foreword by Paul M. Helfrich
Given that Kris recently gave a “ringing endorsement” to the concept of stages of physical and psychological development during the August 29, 2005, Dinner and a Dead Guy session, I wanted to continue to explore the many implications. As you know, I am a student of Wilber’s work, and believe it to provide the first postmodern theory of consciousness that holds the potential to heal the modern schizoid split between science, art, and moral value spheres (think institutions).
Now, Wilber doesn’t have it all figured out, and he has his own biases which are ever-present. For example, he has a strong Zen Buddhist influence, which colors his theories. He acknowledges they are true but still partial, so he’s not offering what follows as an absolute proclamation, but a balanced, inclusive, and comprehensive outline of some of the most relevant sociological and psychological issues pertaining to spiritual and religious practices in the USA today. So take it with a grain of salt. Hopefully, if you are NIRAAing or AAAing your way through this, you will see your own reflections somewhere in what follows.
Hopefully you will see a connection between how the many issues Ken points out affect your own approach to conscious creation, and see the need for an Integral Conscious Creation that uses Wilber’s integral approach to properly situate various belief systems across a developmental spectrum supported by decades of solid, and ongoing psychological research.
Now, as you read this excerpt, keep in mind that Wilber’s speaking as a social psychologist, taking an integral view on the sociology of religion in the United States. The key issues that relate to what he calls Person-Centered Civil Religion include:
- Hierarchy + Heterarchy = Holarchy (there are natural hierarchies or stages of all sorts, and natural heterarchies or equivalences of all sort nested together. Learning to NIRAA or AAA them is very important.)
- Legitimacy + Meaning = Translative Spirituality/Religion
- Authenticity + Transcendence = Transformative Spirituality/Religion
(Both forms of spirituality/religion are natural and necessary in their healthy forms, and create the two main directions that spiritual/religious movements take. Learning to NIRAA or AAA them is also very important.)
What’s clear to me is that the conscious creation community (Seth, Abe, Elias, Kris, etc.-based) are indeed Person-Centered, in the way Ken defines it. There is an emphasis on the individual, not the institution.
Whether or not we practice a Civil Religion depends on how we define our approach to spirituality and spiritual practice. But BOTH sides (person-centered and institutionalized religions) can go too far, in my view, too far toward the individualistic side that leads to narcissism, and too far to the institutional form that dampens authentic transformation.
Of course, there is a large middle ground.
Now, Wilber also speaks as a critic, so some of what follows should be challenging, and possibly even scandalize you (to use one of Jane Roberts’s favorite terms). Thus, my overall point is: personal growth, development, and transformation always includes growing pains. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette, as the saying goes. I seek to minimize the growing pains those of us face who are up to the challenge of authentic personal transformation, the kind that requires PRACTICE and HARD WORK to develop new abilities, like Seth’s high intellect, which Kris just talked about this past Monday evening.
These abilities don’t exist in any large scale yet, but are beginning to emerge across the globe. Note that Ken supports the idea that there ARE millions of people in the USA alone actively engaged in transformative practice. Obviously, this is the direction and focus of my work here in the Dream-Art Science Forum with Integral Conscious Creation.
Seth opens The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events with a call to transformation, not just translation:
“We have never told anybody to do anything except to face up to the abilities of consciousness.”
Further, when introducing the inner senses, he challenges each of us:
“If you would momentarily put aside the selves you take for granted, you could experience your own multidimensional reality. ... I have told you that there are inner senses as well as physical ones. ... You must, first of all, cease identifying yourself completely with your [outer] ego, and realize that you can perceive more than your ego perceives. You must demand more of yourself than you ever have before. [my emphasis]
“... The inner senses are not important because the release clairvoyant or telepathic abilities, but because they reveal to us our own independence from physical matter, and let us recognize our unique, individual multidimensional identity. Properly utilized, they also show us the miracle of physical existence and our place in it. We can live a wiser, more productive, happier physical life because we begin to understand why we are here, individually and as a people.” ~ The Seth Material, p. 275-277.
Also, when discussing the immediate afterdeath experience, he humorously cautioned:
“Now: For those of you who are lazy I can offer no hope: death will not bring you an eternal resting place. You may rest, if this is your wish, for a while. Not only must you use your abilities after death, however, but you must face up to yourself for those that you did not use during your previous existence.
“Those of you who had faith in life after death will find it much easier to accustom yourself to the new conditions. Those of you who do not have such faith may gain it in a different way, by following through in the exercises I will give you later in this book; for these will enable you to extend your perceptions to these other layers of reality if you are persistent, expectant, and determined.” ~ Seth Speaks, p. 121.
Finally, Seth said, again challenging each of us, that:
“This material is not for those who would deceive themselves with pretty, packaged, ribboned, truths – truths that are parceled out and cut apart so that you can digest them. That sort of material does serve a [translative] need, and there are many who give it and it is helpful for those who need it. This material demands more. It demands that you intellectually and intuitively expand it demands that you use your abilities [i.e. transform, grow, develop].
“There are other ways far more difficult and you are not ready for those, but you are ready for the methods that I have given if you are willing to work. And yet by work, I mean a joyful endeavor, a spontaneous endeavor. You have simply to allow yourselves to be yourselves.” [ESP Class, October 21, 1969]
And so, I maintain that the Seth material, and its continuation in Elias and Kris, in particular, ARE BASED UPON a call to authentic transformation, not mere translation. And thus, Integral Conscious Creation is one way in which to begin to properly situate and interpret the core, transformative practices within, including NIRAA and AAA, the focus of Elias for the past ten years, and Kris for the last year. These are foundational practices that complement additional practices, so they are to be used in conjunction with the many practices offered by Seth, Elias, and Kris.
And as you can tell, some of the folks here at NWV have indeed risen to the challenge, and it ain’t always a bed of roses, to quote my dear friend Vicki Pendley. Because this requires a long term commitment to be joyous and playful while diving into the unknown reality of Self and seeking the remembrance of essence and All-That-Is.
Tuesday, September 23, 1997
THE NEW PERSON-CENTERED CIVIL RELIGION
From One Taste: Daily Reflections on Integral Spirituality by Ken Wilber (2000)
Two sociological reports recently surfaced that have caused quite stir. One is Paul Ray’s “The Rise of Integral Culture,” the other is Robert Forman’s “Report on Grassroots Spirituality.” Taken together they port to show an extraordinary cultural revolution now underway, centered largely on the baby boomers. Paul Ray’s conclusion is that a new, higher, more transformative culture – which he calls “Integral Culture,” inhabited by what he calls “Cultural Creatives” – is now on the rise, and that it well might be one of the most significant cultural transformations of the last thousand years. In many ways these reports are not that different from the early boomer manifestos, The Aquarian Conspiracy, The Making of a Counter-Culture, The Turning Point, and The Greening of America. What sets them apart is an attempt at data collection and sociological methodology: they are presented as something of a social scientific conclusion, however preliminary. And the gist of both reports is that the presently occurring revolution is a deeply spiritual revolution. According to Paul Ray, the Cultural Creatives comprise 24% of the adult American population, or a staggering forty-four million people.
At the same time, it seems obvious that forty-four million mostly middle-class and upper-middle-class baby boomers are not undergoing profound transformative spiritual realization, even though at least half of them seem to be claiming that they are. What on earth is going on here?
What we have, I think, is a truly fascinating cultural phenomenon, which involves not primarily a new mode of transformative spirituality, but the emergence of a relatively new mode of translative spirituality. Not a new authenticity – or way to find actual transcendence of the self, but a new legitimacy – or way to give meaning to the self. Not a new and profound growth in consciousness, but a new way to feel good at one’s present stage. Herein lies a tale.
In the late 1950s, a number of serious scholars (including Talcott Parsons, Edward Shils, and Robert Bellah) put forth the notion of civil religion. The idea was that many Americans had transferred a sense of the sacred from institutional religion (Church religion) to certain aspects of their own civil society. The result – a civil religion – tended to view certain American characteristics and historical events as being sacred, divine, or divinely inspired. The Immigration to America was a new Exodus and Americans were the new Chosen People, meant to carry a spiritual epiphany to the rest of the world.
This civil religion was clearly translative, not transformative; it did not transcend the self, but it did connect the self to a sense of something bigger. It thus gave many Americans a sense of meaning and legitimacy to their lives. Meaning, because they were linked to something larger than themselves; legitimacy, because their lives were sanctioned by what they took to be sacred. And that is indeed what all translative spirituality does for the individual. Correlatively, for the society at large, legitimation is a crucial ingredient in cultural meaning and social cohesion. And that point that these scholars made was that the civil religion was now performing many of these crucial tasks (emotional expression and social cohesion) that the Churches were failing to do. Thus, many civil and secular institutions were imbued with a sense of the sacred that the Churches were not adequately offering, but always with the understanding that this sacredness was part of a special mission that these Americans were shouldering.
However, in the late 1960s, the secular and civil religion – along with many other American institutions – underwent a legitimation crisis. In A Sociable God, I discussed this legitimation crisis at length and concluded that three general outcomes were likely. As conventional legitimacy fragmented, individuals (and society itself) could: (1) avail themselves of the opportunity to grow in more postconventional directions, including, for a few, genuinely transpersonal, transrational, and spiritual modes; (2) regress to preconventional and egocentric modes; or (3) find a new civil religion, or comparable legitimating belief system that would take the ordinary translations of the separate self and call them sacred.
It appears, in almost all ways, that the Integral Culture described by Ray is the new civil religion. There is little evidence that post-postconventional modes are operative in many of the Cultural Creatives, although there is a fair amount of regressive narcissism. But what we see mostly is a new and novel form of translative legitimacy and translative spirituality, which operates not to transcend the separate self but to give it meaning, consolation, sanction, and promise.
Largely boomer driven, this new religion – which I will call Person-Centered Civil Religion – has all the characteristics of the general postmodern post-structuralist agenda that still dominates boomer academia. Namely, with a few exceptions it is: anti-hierarchical, anti-institutional, anti-authority, anti-science, anti-rationality, and deeply subjectivistic [see November 23 for a discussion of these trends]. This is in sharp contrast to much of the old civil religion. However, like the old civil religion, the new believers no longer find the Church to be dispensing enough sacredness (“grassroots spirituality,” according to Forman, believes in ABC: Anything But the Church). And also like the old civil religion, they generally believe they are the vanguard of a new spiritual realization, or, at the least, a new paradigm; and many further believe that it will save or transform the world, heal the planet, heal America, etc.
The specific contents of the new Person-Centered Civil Religion (PCCR) can be traced to several influences, in my opinion. First and foremost is Romanticism – an emphasis on feeling instead of reason, on sentimental connection with others, and on the sacredness of nature as opposed to culture (the largest subset of Cultural Creatives, according to Ray, are the Green Cultural Creatives). The second is the self-experiential therapies made popular in the sixties (Cultural Creatives, according to Ray, are the prime consumers of experiential workshops). The third is new-age religion (which is one of the main ingredients of Integral Culture religion, according to Ray, even though many object to the name). The fourth is anything holistic (or, as Ray puts it, “holistic everything” – although, self-contradictorily, the actual details of this holism are never spelled out, since that would be “too controlling” – it’s a holism with few specifics, although it sometimes relies on flatland systems theory). The fifth is globalism, or an intent to see their values shared by the rest of the world. The sixth is feminism and women’s spirituality (60% of Cultural Creatives are women).
The emphasis on women’s spirituality is interesting, I believe, and is a key to much of Person-Centered Civil Religion, both in positive and negative ways. Much of women’s spirituality takes its cue from Deborah Tannen’s and Carol Gilligan’s research, which showed that females tend to emphasize communion, relationship, and care, whereas males tend to emphasize agency, rights, and justice. The former tend to be heterarchical which means no position is privileged, but all perspectives are linked and joined); the latter tend to be hierarchical (which means wider and deeper perspectives are ranked). Women’s spirituality has therefore a very strong anti-hierarchical stance and, indeed, tends to vociferously define itself that way.
What this unfortunately overlooks is Gilligan’s actual findings, which is that women (like men) go through three major hierarchical (her word) stages of growth, which she calls selfish (egocentric or preconventional), care (sociocentric or conventional), and universal care (worldcentric or postconventional). Both males and females develop through that same hierarchy, but males do so with an emphasis on agency, women on communion. (And remember, hierarchy in its healthy sense really means holarchy, because each higher stage transcends but includes – or envelops and nests – its juniors: a development that is envelopment, and this is for both men and women.)
The fact that so much of women’s spirituality, cultural creatives, and grassroots spirituality all aggressively deny a developmental hierarchy is probably one of the main reasons that so few of those movements seem to be genuinely transformative. Transformation means holarchical growth, but if you deny holarchy in the first place, you have no compass, no way to find your direction, no way to find authenticity and transformation, and so you must settle for legitimacy and translation instead. And that is what the new Person-Centered Civil Religion does. In my opinion, this anti-hierarchy stance is very likely destined to keep the PCCR a largely translative, not transformative, movement.
Roger Walsh, reviewing movements such as the Integral Culture, added: “These movements are generally antithetical toward hierarchies. Yet the reality is that spiritual development does occur through levels and some people are more developed than others. Failure to recognize this can lead to such problems as an unwillingness to make essential discernments, a lack of critical thinking, and a pseudo-egalitarianism. To put it bluntly, the central question is to what extent integral culture or grassroots spirituality is actually fostering spiritual maturation and to what extent they are simply making people feel good. Much of what passes for spirituality at the present time seems to consist merely of intense feelings.” [See July 5 for the “415 Paradigm,” one of the most prominent versions of the PCCR.] (1)
Still, there are many good things that can be said about Person-Centered Civil Religion as a translative, legitimate spirituality. It is the first translative religion to take ecological concerns seriously. It includes many previously marginalized groups, including most especially women (however, it is a largely white, middle- and upper-middle-class religion). It has a guarded but infectious social optimism. It highly values education, neighborhood building, and especially dialogue and small group discussion (“civil” means associations that lie between the family and the state; the PCCR values small, civic associations, but still focused on the person, hence the title). These are all quite positive, it seems to me, at least in a translative sense. And, of course, anybody at virtually any stage of growth can have a temporary peak experience – an authentic spiritual experience – and this certainly includes members of Person-Centered Civil Religion, so they are not without access to genuine glimpses of the Divine. The same is true for all people, so this is nothing that sets the PCCR apart).
Tossed into that mix is an intense consumerism; a love of tourism (especially if labeled eco or spiritual); an obsessive interest in food and food consumption; the highest attendee rate at feeling-experiential workshops. They are the innovators for boutique beers, and are more likely to have at least five flavors of vinegar. They generally despise TV (which definitely leaves me out of the new Integral Culture; but then, I always thought that if these authors watched more TV, they would never write books like The Aquarian Conspiracy or The Greening of America, because they would see what is actually going on out there).
In my opinion, 24% of the population is not engaged in deeply translative, transpersonal spirituality. About 1% is – which is still several million people! – but not nearly the numbers claimed by the Aquarian Conspiracy or the Integral Culture. [See the introduction to Volume Seven of the Collected Works for an in-depth discussion of this topic.]
Aside from that 1%, the rest of the population seek their legitimacy through (1) traditional mythic (biblical) religion, which is still a huge force in this culture; (2) traditional republicanism or civic humanism, closely allied, in America, with biblical mythic religion; (3) secular science, the religion of the educational elites; (4) political liberalism, closely allied with science; (5) regressive new-age movements; and (6) Person-Centered Civil Religion.
Whatever we might think about the Cultural Creatives, there is one item I especially appreciate about them (which means, about my generation): we were the first generation to take seriously, on a very wide scale, the notion of transformative, authentic, spiritual liberation. We brought Eastern mysticism here in an unprecedented fashion; we insisted on Christianity and Judaism going back to their mystical roots (in everything from the Gnostics to Eckhart to Luria and Kabbalah); we demanded direct spiritual experience, not mere dogma. We were a generation almost defined by Be Here Now [by Ram Dass]. We had all of that as at least an idea of greater possibilities. We would, in the best and truest sense, subvert and transgress all conventions and thereby find a freedom that previous generations could only dream of.
Alas, all of that remained pretty much an idea only. It was one thing to drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and talk endlessly about the Zen of this and the Zen of that, the Tao of this and the Tao of that. It was quite another to actually practice Zen, to spend at least six years in grueling meditation practice in order to truly transgress the world and subvert samsara. And thus, in the coming decades, we indeed dropped out, not of conventionality, but of true transgression, true transformative practice, and, with the help of Person-Centered Civil Religion, we reentered marketplace, not from the tenth of the Ox-Herding Pictures, but from the first. We in fact became yuppies, and carried out our self-obsession with a capitalistic fury; or we confined our spiritual impulses to the gross realm alone, turning poor Gaia into the only God we could find. In general, we took to Romanticism – a horizontal obsession with self – and abandoned real Idealism – a vertical transcendence of self. And with the help of the PCCR we could rationalize the entire charade, and get on about the dirty business of nursing this self obsession through the long days and lonely nights.
But what I appreciate is the fact that, from that 24% of the population, which at least still has the idea that true transcendence is possible, comes most of the 1 % of the population that is actually transcending, actually engaged not just in translative spirituality or the occasional peak experience, but in authentic practice, plateau experience, and permanent realization. The fact remains that 1% of a population – several million people – actually practicing authentic transcendence and compassionate embrace is extremely rare in any culture, and this just might turn out to be one of the true gifts my generation gives to the world.
At the same time, this sets an important educational agenda: how can we reach out and educate people as to the difference between mere translative beliefs and genuine transformative practices? How can we help turn that 1% into five, ten, twenty percent? As Jack Crittenden says, this is an elitism, but an elitism to which everyone is invited.
Endnotes:
(1) Robert Forman is a gifted theorist and a superb editor; his research is not necessarily agreeing with the contents of his respondents, but simply reporting them. In Forman’s excellent The Problem of Pure Consciousness, he advances the hypothesis that the state of formless absorption (or unmanifest cessation) is a near universal of profound mystical spirituality. I agree. So perhaps in his next round of research, Robert might pointedly ask all of his respondents, “Have you had a direct and prolonged experience of pure formless cessation? If so, please describe it.” This would give Robert a better idea of the percentage of grassroots spirituality that is accessing this profound dimension, and, by subtraction, the percentage that is involved in lesser or merely translative spirituality (such as Person-Centered Civil Religion).