The Integral Message
The Contemporary Search For Deeper Meaning
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In his book, The Spectrum of Consciousness,[1] Wilber indicates that the transition from dualistic to non-dualistic awareness is pivotal to our understanding of the world.
The quantum revolution was so cataclysmic because it attacked not one or two conclusions of classical physics but its very corner-stone, the foundation upon which the whole edifice was erected, and that was the subject-object dualism…This subject cannot tinker with the object, because subject and object are ultimately one and the same thing.[2]
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Wilber proceeds with a reflection upon the words of scientist Werner Heisenberg.
From the very start we are involved in the argument between nature and man in which science plays only a part, so that the common division of the world into subject and object, inner world and outer world, body and soul is no longer adequate and leads us into difficulties.[3]
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Wilber points out that philosopher, Erwin Schroedinger heartily concurs and states simply, that all types of problems exist in understanding our world if we do not abandon dualism.[4] Wilber concludes that in relinquishing the core dualism of subject versus object, these physicists had in principle, relinquished all dualisms. Wilber is clear in highlighting that this notion of non-duality is vital.[5] Herein lies our challenge of capturing the meaning of relationality in the non-dual reality.
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While humanity has increasingly become secular through the twentieth century and artificial in Panikkar’s term, for a significant number the opposite has been similarly developing on a different level. New perception of reality has built upon quantum theory, but as Wilber points out such perceptions have been so comprehensive that all other domains of knowledge are being seen in harmony with quantum.
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This change in human perception has shown signs in three significant trends by people searching for a deeper meaning to life beyond the dualistic world of secularism. Particularly aided by the influx of Asian migration within the western world, the practice of meditation has flourished in its many forms. It has similarly revitalised the long-practiced meditation within the Christian religion, but which had lost currency in the power of it’s institutionalism.
On the back of formative work by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and William James, and the explosion of the new science, research into the functioning of the mind, elevated psychology both professionally practiced and easily accessible to the lay person through self-help medium. Psychology increased importance in understanding the mind and shaping the quality of personal experience and thus a pathway to deeper meaning.
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With the globalising of the human race, awareness of both the interconnected functioning of all systems of life, but also the discrepancy in life style across total population, revealed a fractured world in unacceptable tension. Wealth, health, power, opportunity, freedom etc. pricked the conscious of many and the call for social justice and responsibility grew into a third trend seen as vital for qualitive meaning for the human search for being an ethical and moral people.
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It is the non-dual perception of consciousness that enabled increasing numbers to see that beyond the fragmented state of the world, there was a greater perception that was increasingly awakening in the mind of people to know the inter-related nature of all reality. If Panikkar has described the philosophical and theological understanding of this inter-related reality, relational spirituality is interpreting its truth for human living.
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[1] Ken Wilber, The Spectrum of Consciousness, 2nd Quest ed., Quest Books (Wheaton, IL USA: Theosophical Pub. House, 1993).
[2] The Spectrum of Consciousness ; No Boundary ; Selected Essays, 1st ed., The Collected Works of Ken Wilber (Boston: Shambhala, 1999), 24.
[3] ibid., 27.
[4] ibid.
[5] ibid., 34.
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Wilber, Ken. The Spectrum of Consciousness. Quest Books. 2nd Quest ed. Wheaton, IL USA: Theosophical Pub. House, 1993.
———. The Spectrum of Consciousness ; No Boundary ; Selected Essays. The Collected Works of Ken Wilber. 1st ed. Boston: Shambhala, 1999.
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