The Integral Message

A description of the interactive co-operation of nature, sail and human in creations harmonious balance built upon an attitude of giving and receiving.

My presentation of Relational Spirituality is the fruit of my life search for ways to understand spirituality from various perspectives, such as the meditative, the psychological, and the sociological perspectives. The outcome has been the correlation of Jungian psychology, Wilberian integral universalism, and Panikkar‘s nondual theology. For practical living, all perspectives are drawn together as Relational Spirituality, which is based upon the ancient wisdom of the Shema, the call to love God and one’s neighbour as oneself, and affirmed by Jesus in his teaching.

My life has been shaped by exploring a broad perspective of pathways others have found important in pursuing their desire for the deepest meaning in life. My journey has been to learn how these all inter-relate with one another. I have drawn greatly upon the contribution of Ken Wilber and Raimon Panikkar who have contributed significantly to describing this inter-related view of life. I seek to mature in this inter-related integral pathway.

Integral theorists such as Gebser and Wilber trace the history of mutational shifts in the evolutionary story of human consciousness. From primitive consciousness the story moves to the magic, the mythic, the mental rational and now over the recent two hundred years the emerging integral era. The external signs of such dramatic change have been particularly noticed over the past century with the explosion of the information age and cyber technology. Both Jaspers and Heidegger describe the implication of this new era.

Throughout the twentieth century three major movements have been important to people seeking to shape a life style of meaning, firstly the meditative, secondly the psychological self-help domain, and thirdly the social justice social responsibility pursuit. These are the foundation of an inter-related world.

There are various ways the human mind perceives the world. The previous mental rational mind divides and analyses and is spoken of as dualistic, however, the integral world can see beyond the individual entities to the way all things inter-relate. This is characterised as non-dual perspective. Wilber outlines how the quantum world was responsible for illustrating how the foundation of all reality is inter-related and thus non-dual. By dismembering the subject-object duality they had dismembered all dualities. This opened the realisation that the most comprehensive sight is non-dual and applies to all realms of life. 

Raimon Panikkar is a Catholic, priest, academic, mystic with three doctorates, philosophy, science and theology. Born of a Spanish mother and an Indian father, he spent much of his life in India seeking to reconcile his Christian Hindu background, Eastern Western worldview, the science spirituality dichotomy. His vision of the interrelated nature of all, is captured in his Cosmotheandric vision, which speaks of the inter-dependence of creator, creation and creature. This non-dual integral perception is built upon the understanding of the polarity created by each pole (separate entities) in relation to one another.

Panikkar’s Cosmotheandric vision speaks of a view of reality that draws together an understanding of contemporary knowledge  and enlightens its meaning. It is in this integral era that his descriptions make him a leading light amongst all minds.

Panikkar speaks of three primary categories describing the three ways we perceive life. The first sight is by way of our senses. The second sight is that created by the mind. Both the first and second sights perceive the world dualistically’. Wilber uses the word holon to speak of every perceived individual entity. The third sight sees beyond the individual holons to the relational nature of everything. This connectivity of all holons creates what Wilber calls a holarchy. This is the nature of the third sight and is described as non-dual. Panikkar uses different terms. He calls the holon a pole and the relationality of the poles a polarity.

The philosophical/theological foundation for the relationality of the mind is found in the Christian tradition which refers to God as the Trinity. Noting  the Asian Hindu tradition Panikkar speaks of it as Advaita. Arising out of these traditions develops his integral nondual vision around the concept of Creator, Creation and Creature, that is, God (theos), Creation (cosmos), and humanity (andros). This symbolises the relationality of these three in his composite word, the ‘Cosmotheandric’ vision. While he believes it is not possible to know everything to truly create a universal system, he points out the wholistic inter-related understanding of all is an internal state of the mind, hence he refers to the Cosmotheandric intuition.

The relationality of Panikkar’s vision is captured in the polarity that exists between individual poles. His description of the integral challenges the more traditional separation of God and Creation for he speaks of them as ‘co-temporal’ and therefore ‘co-existing’. This impacts our understanding of both immanence and transcendence, which integrally depicts the one notion of being in different manifestation.

While the creature stands most commonly as a separate and independent entity within the context of the creation, Panikkar points out that all creation, including creatures, consists of a unity of make up across the board. His discussion of one individual who he names Isabelle, is merely one sample of the whole to be found within herself. The polarity is the fundamental nature of being in creation, but only becomes two separates when perceived dualistically.

The relationship between creation and creature is not of two separates because in reality they are all one. It is just that the creature has the capacity to perceive, reflect and know the reality of the state of its existence. It can perceive of the separation as well as the unity. This gift of consciousness equally enables to know both unity and separateness with the creator. But like the unity of the Creator and Creation so is the Creator and Creature. It is in the knowing of oneself that the polarity with the Creator becomes apparent. Panikkar uses the example of nouns and pronouns to further explore the polarity of the Creator and Creature. 

A reflection upon the Ocean gives an imaginary illustration of the integral. The first sight is like a person standing by the ocean and observing it externally. The second sight is as if one rationally studied the ocean with the imagined knowledge of the internal landscape of the water beneath the surface, for example the floor of the ocean, and maybe the location of a ship wreck. The Integral experience is like donning scuba equipment and swimming within the sea and functioning with an awareness of all within the ocean in any direction simultaneously.

For Panikkar the heart of the integral awareness lies in the state of the ego, that is its attitude toward all that surrounds. The integral is shaped by the attitude of the ego as either wilful or willing. Self-centred or God/Self Archetype centred. 

This particular article is a review of Panikkar’s work which describes his cosmotheandric vision as the integral symbol necessary for shaping the third millennium. It notes how several scholars speak of Panikkar as a spiritual mutant of the world he wrote of. Cousin’s asks the question how people might live this same vision Panikkar both wrote of and lived. This provided an introduction for Relational Spirituality, based upon the Shema, the call to love God and ones’s neighbour as oneself, as a replica of Panikkar’s integral cosmotheandric vision focused within the personal experience.  This approach is explained by knowledge of three trends of approaches to life people engaged in to seek greater meaning in life.

The key to applying Panikkar’s vision is dialogue. He describes two types of dialogue, the more traditional dialectical dialogue based upon a dualistic exchange of information. It is likely to highlight the differences as much as similarities. The dialogue that Panikkar is calling people to in the integral world is dialogical dialogue. It seeks a deep understanding of the other’s life and the way they see and experience life. The great challenge before Panikkar’s vision and Relational Spirituality is an understanding of what is meant by the inter-dependent, inter-relational world. 

The recognition of the inter-relatedness of all things has substantially arisen out of the world of quantum theory. Two Christian theological scientists, Palaeontologist, Teilherd de Chardin and Astrophysicist, Bill Stoeger describe the inter-related world. 

Given the emerging perception of the globalising world across all domains of life, Panikkar pronounces his warning about humanity’s history of conflict and the necessity of a new ‘mythos’ of peace lest we destroy ourselves.

The teaching of Jesus on the way of love as a trifold encounter as described in the Jewish Shema, the call to love God and one’s neighbour as oneself is elaborated upon by David Augsberger. The relational polarities created by the three dynamics of God, neighbour and self replicate Panikkar’s Creator, Creation and creature. The following discussion will be enhanced by the Jungian model of Personality.

Carl Jung’s influence was great within the field of psychology through the twentieth century and is a model that lends itself to the spiritual discussion and relationship with God. His work on describing the states of consciousness of the mind, as conscious, personal unconscious, collective unconscious, is the substantive model for examining the relationships between God, neighbour and self. Running through these states of mind is an imaginary relational axis emanating from the foci of the conscious mind – the ego, through the collective unconscious - representative of the universal mind, to the self archetype as the central symbol of the totality of ones being – the face of the divine. This is the fulfilment of the integral.

Relational Spirituality draws the three poles and it’s sets of polarities, God and Self, God and Neighbour, and Self and Neighbour, together into the one inter-related, inter-dependent non-dual unity. The story of the developing and maturing ego through the story of life is described by developmental psychologists. Two teachings of Jesus describe the emerging integral picture, firstly, ‘where two or three are gathered together in the inter-relational meeting with others, and secondly the event known as the Transfiguration. 

The relationship between God and a human is interwoven. Historical wisdom of the spiritually insightful, note that the knowing of God is synonymous with the knowing of self. This is a universal reality. The human mind has that privilege of the gift of knowing and determining lie’s meaning. To know God is to ascend through oneself. In the Jungian model this is the development of the maturing relationship between ego and self archetype. It includes the journey through the personal and collective unconscious. Developmental psychologists such as, Erikson, Gilligan and Fowler each contribute to a description of the maturing relationship of the ego - self archetype, ie. the ego/self and God. It is the heart of the non-dual awareness where one sees the integral relationality of God in the self-archetype.  Here the immanence and the transcendence integrally intertwined.

The traditional dualistic metaphysical perception of a God beyond and separate from the known creation no longer reflects the knowledge of the world as humanity has come to understand. This notion of a separate God raises too many irreconcilable questions unanswerable. Instead, one must ask if there is any imagined place, space or time where God does not exist. Paul declared that God is all and in all. John proclaimed that, ’All things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made.’ These words are speaking of creation as the manifestation of God in sacred form, traditionally spoken of as, the good, the true and the beautiful. Panikkar speaks of our world as a sacred secularity. While the world of psychology has opened the human mind to the importance of knowing and accepting oneself, the sociological fields of study have clarified the means and importance of social justice and social responsibility. Humans must love their neighbours as themselves.

While individuals have their own conscious awareness and individual identity, this is only partial perception for in reality no person stands alone totally devoid of connection with another. In particular the interest in social justice and social responsibility and the field of psychology have pierced the world of external perception to reveal that all people are deeply interwoven in one another’s life. The quality of a person’s life is shaped by the quality of our participation in the larger community. The personality template of Jung can illustrate the lines of connectivity between all presumed entities to awaken us to the inherent polarities across humanity. Numerous psychologists have elucidated the nature of inter-connectivity, such as Berne with Transactional Analysis, Bowen in the family system or Senge in the business world. This inter-connectivity is perhaps best summarised by Satyr who speaks of the great net of connection across society. What we see of this inter-connectedness is shaped by the degree of our own awareness of our internal inter-relatedness.

The heart of Relational Spirituality arises from the interior state of one’s mind. Our own interior world enables us to engage with the world around us. As the ego enables us to engage with our own interior, so it enables our being to relate to the world we perceive as external. We discover the unity of all as it dynamically functions in rhythm and harmony. It is the attitudinal state of the ego that expands our sight to recognise the inter-connected nature of the polarities joining all poles. Such a world of inter-related engagement, is fulfilled by the way of dialogical dialogue presented by Panikkar necessary for our time. It is the way of peace.