My blog writing has slowed because I’m now well into my novel. My protagonist is now in the Gaza strip and is about to be taken to an Ishraqiya Sufi meeting on the outskirts of Gaza city. He is being guided by Jamal, whose family can trace their lineage back to the ‘assassins’. This basically means Jamal is Ismaeli. Jamal is also a DJ and ‘blogger’ who uses ‘culture jamming’ techniques to wage an electronic jihad against the forces of darkness, the Sunni ’salafiya’. They’ve just produced a copy of a typical jihadi suicide martyr video, with the young martyr appearing with guns and paraphenalia making a serious jihadi speech, then we see him sitting in the car and driving off, the rousing music and propaganda slogans plays in the background. And then the car stalls and he gets out to look under the bonnet, steam is pouring out and he gets angry and kicks the car – cut to long shot of the car blowing up and rousing music. I think he’ll call the satirical series ‘Nasruddin the jihadi’, after the famous satirical figure, sheik Nasruddin.
Anyway – I bought a copy of ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins. Now I know many have dismissed Dawkins as a reductionist but this does not mean he does not make many valid points. I was aware that things had got bad in the US but after reading Dawkins I was not aware that it had got ‘that’ bad. It seems atheists are the new blacks and gays – actively discriminated against. Seems you have to believe in God otherwise you face all sorts of minor and even major acts of discrimination. Given that many of the founding fathers were atheists how did it get to this point?
Dawkins calls for atheists to get organized but admits its a bit like herding cats. He claims that atheists have a duty to out themselves and says that there are a significant number, greater than many strident and proud religious lobby groups.
I appreciate his argument that religion is afforded a priviliged position and he points out how in the name of religion all sorts of absurdities and nonsense are tolerated and rationalised. This is itself a form of discrimination. How absurd is it that a court will grant an exemption to take hallucinogens for completely irrational ‘religious’ reasons but deny the exemption for very sound ‘rational’ reasons.
I also appreciated his dismissal of Stephen Jay Gould’s ‘Non-overlapping magesteria’ concept. He’s particularly scathing about this and it is worth integral theorists understanding his point. The first thing he objects to is that science cannot or ought not to try and answer the ‘why’ question. The second thing he objects to is the idea that religion and theology has any greater expertise than anyone else to answer the ‘why’ question. In fact he dismissive of theology in general and provides examples of theological ‘utter nonsense’.
Most of the book is an attack on the Abrahamic faith. He does not include Buddhism because he regards it as a philosophy.
I think that integral theory leads us logically to atheism. A nondual ultimate reality is both nothing and everything. A creator God automatically leads us to dualism. So I often wonder why some Integralists seem to go soft on ‘theism’. Dawkins argues that there is an unexamined cultural norm to treat religious delusion with kid gloves. And yet I would argue this has very serious consequences. The reason the US has moved from a position where the founding fathers were either atheists or deists to where politicians cannot win office unless they declare they believe in God is precisely because religion has been accorded a ‘criticism-free’ status along with its ‘tax-free’ status. This has given it almost free reign to propagate nonsense. And when ‘nonsense’ based only on faith is allowed to trump reason then what we get is a devolution. We are supposed to move from the mythic to the rational and then to the integral. Integral should not be tolerating to move backwards from rational to mythical.
There are actually three parties in play here: science; mainstream western religions; and what can loosely be called New Agers. Each has their hardcore adherents, who are implacably opposed to the hardcore adherents of the other two. But each also has its more moderate adherents, who try to reach out to the moderates in the other two.
Hard core sympathizers with science, like Dawkins and Dennett, do not, as you point out, have much to say about Buddhism, which despite its ancient roots could be considered part of New Age in its broadest sense (as incorporated by integral theory). They spend most of their time attacking Western religion, because it’s quite easy to do so, and because, yes, it is extraordinarily influential in America. But I think Gould’s claim that science and religion operate in separate spheres makes a lot of sense with regard to integral theory. As Wilber points out, science is not an appropriate tool to use to seek certain forms of knowledge, a point that Dawkins et al. seem totally oblivious to. Really, the old adage, you don’t play the game, you don’t make the rules applies here. Since these scientific atheists are unwilling to make the effort to try meditation, they can have nothing to say about the reality of higher states of consciousness.
Scientists or philosophers like Dawkins and Dennet who adopt an atheistic point of view do not, as your quote indicates, have much to say about
If one does include mystical views, on the other hand, then I believe Gould’s separation of church and state makes a lot of sense. Science simply cannot address the concept of a state beyond thought.
Those last two paragraphs should have been deleted. I am still unable to edit posts here.
Dawkins does not appear to have anything to say about states of ‘higher’ consciousness. He would say this is an unanswerable question and cites examples of other such unanswerables. He has no problem with agnosticism with regard to unanswerables. What he objects to is unsubstantiated faith claims about the nature of reality which he says can be disputed by science. And by science I think he would accept a broader definition of science as rational enquiry. The reason I think he leaves Buddhism alone is because, in his life, he has had many conversations with the religious and I think he understands that Buddhism does use rational enquiry. I don’t think he’d place it in the New Age category at all.
“So I often wonder why some Integralists seem to go soft on ‘theism’”
I think one of the reasons why, is that the mythic is reproduced, in a different form, higher up on the chain – in the form of Divine Archetypes.
There is this whole form of religious experience that include deep experiences of an “Other God” – be it Mother Mary, Kali, etc – and these experiences – felt, phenomenological, repeatable, are able to flood and blow the “rationa” mind away.
Now, I happen to agree, that the Archetypal Gods eventually are revealed as empty, and subsume into the non-dual.
But it is a fine line. It is VERY hard to tease out the separation between the mythic and the archetypal, yet the archetypal Gods, form some of the purest experiences of the Greatest Good – love, selflessness, reverence, awe, embodied energetic fullness, etc.
I think that is why theism is viewed softly, at least by me. The highest forms of theism, reflected in archetypal experience, are as glorious as falling in love, as important for the soul in purification as any sitting or resting in Big Mind work.
Yep, I appreciate your point. This is where ‘higher’ philosophy comes in. As you know Tantric Buddhism is steeped in this archetypal understanding and yet within this system, from the heart of Tantra – Kashmir, arose Nagarjuna. The danger is in the archetypes being taken as real gods. Interestingly Greek philosophy had already reached the same conclusion – the gods were symbols. This was before Christian literalism.
As to Nagarjuna on archetypes, here’s what this author has to say in relation to him, Jung and pomo on the subject. Ray said something similar in his early Integral World essay on integrating Jung.
“Jung’s Empty Self: a Buddhist and Postmodern Perspective†by Lee Robbins, Ph.D
New York University
http://www.jungianstudies.org/conferences/texas/papers/RobbinsL.pdf
I would like to turn directly to Jung’s 1938 definition of the archetype in preparation for my comments on the empty Self:
“It is necessary to point out once more that archetypes are not determined as regards their content, but only as regards their form and then only to a very limited degree….The archetype itself is empty….nothing but a possibility of representation which is given a priori.â€Â
Jung says clearly ‘the archetype itself is empty.’ What precisely does he mean by empty? We may infer that in the context of his definition, emptiness has something to do with the possibility of imaginal representation as it is filled out by the content of our human experience. The content of the empty archetype, or the image is not determined. It has infinite variety or a boundless quality. In other words it is always changing, as is the form but to a more limited degree. Implied in Jung’s statement is the important distinction between the archetypal image that may be known and the symbol of the archetype that can never be known. What precedes the image of the empty archetype, is a movement of energy out of what Jung describes as the psychoid
character of the collective unconscious. And from this swell of energy emerges the fluid form that circumscribes the content of my human experience with all of its delight and anguish..
This Self, like the general definition of the empty archetype, is not stable. It is not a substance but a dynamic process; It has no immutable essence only active force; It cannot be grasped because it is both constantly transforming as it is transformed. This is the self that bears a striking resemblance to the Buddhist notion of emptiness or shunyata.
According to the Mahayana philosopher Nagarjuna, who is considered the poet and primary exponent of Buddha’s teaching on shunyata, emptiness is not a bleak and nihilistic void, which is how shunyata has been misrepresented in the west under the influence of Shopenhauer and Neitzsche. Neither is it a mystical state, not another privileged religious object and not something sacred to believe in. Rather, emptiness is an experience of the groundless movement of energy, and manifests in the momentary arising and perishing of all the forms of the phenomenal world.
The phenomenal world of emptiness is also a contingent world, which means that events are devoid of any intrinsic separate being or of existing in their own right. Whatever is contingent depends on something else for its existenceâ€â€there are no isolated or permanent objects or subjects. Emptiness, therefore, simply describes an unfathomable matrix of relationships that are connected in and by a groundless flow of energy that has no discernable beginning and no divine power mysteriously directing it to a preordained end. Poetically rendered as the ‘fasting of the mind,’ emptiness is a fertile absence of the perceived fixed conditions, which denies the mutable nature of life.
As emptiness functions as a symbol to describe the groundless movement of energy out of which the phenomenal world is born and dies; so the transformational self is a symbol that points to an
undifferentiated mass of energy permeating the psychoid realm of psyche, out of which the particular form and content of our physical and mental life emerges.
But this self is not only transforming our life from moment to moment on the cellular level; it is itself being modified by the impact of its own dynamic activity as it influences our relationship to the world. Self then, is also a contingent phenomenon which means that it is emptyâ€â€a ceaselessly moving conjunction between person and world, that cannot exist apart from the events it permeates and cannot be sought apart from the totality of all forms. Therefore, the empty self betrays the western idea of a theological first cause because in the Buddhist interdependent universe there are no metaphysical hierarchies.
I think that integral theory leads us logically to atheism.
[snip]
We are supposed to move from the mythic to the rational and then to the integral. Integral should not be tolerating to move backwards from rational to mythical.
Nor should we go from transrational back to rational.
This is a slippery slope.
I’m no scholar but it seems to me that western atheists to move from “gods (Yidams or Ishtadevatas) are empty of inherent existence” or that they “don’t exist independent of your own mind” to they don’t “really” exist and are “mere cultural symbols” far too easily.
Of course this is technically true in a certain sense, but it is also just as true about every human being and natural form of life as well.
When asked if the Hindu gods existed, the Advaita Sage Ramana Maharshi insisted: “They are just as real as you are”.
The Idea that gods are “symbols” must be carefully parsed or we:
1) Undervalue their legitimate power in the mythic imagination where they are effective at the social intersubjective level
2) Deprive ourselves of the possibility of experiencing their power at the deep subjective level in the way in which they actually (though) contingently exist as the radiant powers of the unspeakable. This second level is only experienced by those who are open to the possibility and able to mystically perceive them.
3) Don’t really know what Non-dual practitioners in the east really mean when they say that gods don’t exist.
Just as very famous people appear on three levels, even so do gods (as Buddhist and non-dual Hindus understand them).
1) As symbols for the masses (myth). This is the way most of us know about Marilyn Monroe or George Washington. Not much in touch with the “reality” of the person, but those symbols are intensely powerful, for good or ill. They operate as “spirits” among us as masses, no matter how rational we try to be. Better to choose your gods than to say they are not real and to do this choosing without bitterness, cynicism or irony. This is a lesson the left needs to learn. Myths have their place in addressing the emotions of the intersubjective realm.
2) As beings that exist in themselves. This is the way that only the family and friends of famous people know them. This level is closer to their “reality”. They exist as anyone does, but have more power and influence than “regular” beings. In the case of gods (or Yidams) this is the level that only mystics have access to.
3) As is with all of us, they are empty of inherent existence, dependent on the mind that perceives them. It is in this sense that they “don’t exist”.
This has been a persistent problem with westerners reading the non-dual traditions of the East… they tend to “write out” or write off the existence of divine powers which are taken as granted by the non-dual sages.
This is why Tibetan masters who seem to know better still pray to their Deities with much devotion. They merge their minds with their Deities just the same way that they merge their minds with their teachers.
As noted on this thread the real problem is that these gods are not external natural science. This is where I’d like people to “mind their own business”. Science uses rules of science, mystics use the rules of mysticism. Hawkins is very right when he speaks about external social and scientific realities. When he speaks about god he quite literally does not know what he’s talking about.