The Integral Message
We can now turn our attention to the three polarities. Panikkar presents the inter-dependent relationality of Creator, Creation and Creature in the advaitic vision he refers to as Cosmotheandric. While each is engaged in the other and none can exist, or meaningfully function independently of the other, one is no more central than the other two. Human consciousness functions as the junction point for human awareness for, without consciousness, we cannot know of anything. Consciousness of the human mind is the great gift of human experience.
As Panikkar describes the Cosmotheandric experience, he turns his attention to the God-human relationship. Again, he speaks of this relationship through the advaitic reality which opens our mind to the reality of the polarity created by the two poles (God and human). Panikkar makes clear the creature is not separate from creation but rather the point of conscious meeting. The creature carries the gift of knowing and making meaning of that knowing. As Creation is not separate from the Creator, neither is the Creature in Panikkar’s Cosmotheandric concept. The Creature is an expression of Being in its Becoming. The Creature has opportunity to grow in its’ knowing within the time-space reality of existence. This knowing within the Creature is matured through the interactive relationality existing within the Creature-Creator polarity. Panikkar elaborates:
We are not isolated beings. Man bears the burden, the responsibility, but also the joy and the beauty of the universe. “He who knows himself knows the Lord” goes a traditional saying of Islam that is constantly repeated by Sufis. “He who knows himself knows all things”; so Meister Eckhart completed the famous injunction of the Sybil of Delphos: “Know yourself” The three are here brought together: God, the World, Man. I call this the Cosmotheandric experience.[1]
Panikkar describes further how this inter-relational, or conjoint knowing of self and knowing God, is a universal reality. He elaborates upon this by reference to the insights of great minds from numerous traditions:
… “The way to ascend to God is to descend into oneself,” said Hugh of St. Victor, echoing Plato, the Upanishads, Sankara, Ibn ‘Arabi, and the entire tradition that urges us to cleanse the mirror of the self, the icon of the Deity. Richard of St. Victor seems to complement this thought by recommending, again in tune with the Orient, “let Man ascend through himself above himself.” [2]
The various ways we speak of God in this relationship presents its challenge. The Divine as the creating dynamic gives expression to that part of creation that shares consciousness. Speaking of the human as the ‘image of God’ is the common expression of the Judeo-Christian tradition. So, just as creation cannot be divided from the Divine, neither can the human be divided as if an independent and a separate expression of existence from creation. Panikkar elucidates by discussing the use of various pronouns as the means of clarifying and identifying the dimensions of experience in the Cosmotheandric reality.
We cannot properly speak of the Divine in the third person as if it were a thing, an object. We are obliged by language to use the word “it”. ... The Divine, if at all, can only be said to be an am and not an is. ... The Divine Mystery is the ultimate am – of everything. Yet we also experience the art and the is. This is the Cosmotheandric experience: the undivided experience of the three pronouns simultaneously. Without the Divine, we cannot say I; without Consciousness we cannot say Thou; without the World, we cannot say It. The “three” pronouns, however are not three’ they belong together. They are pro-nouns, or rather pro-noun; they stand for the same (unnameable) noun .... There are not three Names. It is only one Name in three pro-nouns. The noun is in its pronouns. Each pronoun is the whole noun in its pronominal way. One could speak here of three dimensions which totally inter- and intra-penetrate each other. This is the perichoresis repeatedly referred to.[3]
Jung’s model of personality theory helps people explore the relationality of experience. Relational Spirituality is established upon the relationship between the ego and the self- archetype. Edward Edinger has explored this relationship in his book, Ego and the Archetypes.[4] He describes the process by which the ego emerges from the unconscious life of the unborn fetus, progressively developing a sense of its independence through successive stages of life. The ego follows the process of orientating itself toward the fullness of the unconscious without losing any sense of its particularity and uniqueness apparent within the conscious mind.
From the work of Jung, I draw attention to my discussion of his relational axis at the heart of our management of life. This axis reflects Edinger’s description of the heart of our relationality flowing through ego, the unconscious, both personal and collective, self-archetype and beyond. The ego encounters all experience of consciousness from the most concrete form through the infinite mystical. The non-dual integral model believes that humans are encountering the divine in all experience yet through the many different experiences of our human consciousness.
The quality of conscious awareness does change through life’s journey, from moment to moment and through the transitional stages of life. With the expanding orientation of the mind its capacities grow, yet this does not minimise the authenticity of the notion of Spirit in the less developed stages, going right back to the earliest call to trust by a child as highlighted by Erik Erikson. Developmental psychologists make a valuable contribution in aiding our understanding of this journey. Wilber draws attention to Gilligan’s work in her book, In a Different Voice.[5] Gilligan is very conscious that the female perspective is set in a relational context. Reflecting such relationality in the field of developmental psychology, Gilligan speaks of the development of the ego through four stages of life – i.e., the ego-centric (or selfish); the ethnocentric (or care); the world-centric (or universal care); and divine-centred (or integrated). Gilligan lists these progressive stages as human development, particularly displayed through the feminine model.[6]
While developmentalists seek to understand the spiritual paradigm shaped by many streams of experience Fowler is of particular interest. He has studied the stream he refers to as faith development. Fowler’s six stages proceed from the first stage, the ‘Intuitive-Projective’ stage in which the earliest experience of the child picks up the most basic ideas about God from parents. Stage two is the ‘Mythic-Literal’ stage, common for young school age children in whom they begin to understand the world in more logical and literal ways yet accept stories in trust. Stage three is referred to as the ‘Synthetic-Conventional’ stage and is typical of the teenager experience. Social circles have developed, and with this, an awareness of different approaches to life which need to be shaped into some all-encompassing belief system. Stage four is typical of the young adult and Fowler refers to it as the ‘Individuation-Reflective’ stage. The individual freedom of the young adult means they frequently encounter other belief systems and go through the challenge of re-evaluating their system in the light of other approaches. Stage five is the ‘Conjunctive Faith’ stage, a period that commonly might appear in midlife when life’s mystery is re-engaged in the search for much more from the less -uniformly determined world of merely the rational and logical capacities. The sixth stage is the highly-matured journey of which Fowler speaks and which he identifies as the ‘Universalizing Faith’ stage. The few who arrive at this perspective see the importance of valuing and serving all people irrespective of their background and condition. [7]
To hold Fowler’s model up against Gilligan’s model and the Jungian personality theory, we can note how the relational journey replicates the call to ever broader relationality. Jung’s structure is a template for a journey from ego persona to shadow and personal unconscious, to collective unconscious and ultimately, self archetype, highlighting that the call of life is an ever-expanding call to enter infinite relationality.
The non-dual perspective values the life-time journey built upon incremental steps of ‘mindfulness.’ God is present in all things, from the minuscule to the infinite and we live continuously in the dynamic relationality of Being in its Becoming. Mindful of our materialistic, scientifically-described and technologically-organised world, Panikkar sees beyond the surface with the third eye to speak of created reality as a sacred secularity, in an endeavour to open our minds to the non-dual reality of all that is. Replicating his advaitic vision of the Cosmotheandric relationality of Creator, Creature and Creation, the relationality of self and God presented here from my contemporary model of life under the title of Relational Spirituality, adds clarity to a contemporary review of the ancient words of the summary of the law and affirmed by Jesus, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind…’ (Lk.10:22). Contemporary insights enhance our vision of such a relationship and so enlighten us with a non-dual integral understanding and encourage us to boldly walk into the future in the sacred dance of Being in its Becoming. The mystical journey is fundamental to an ever-maturing relationship between Creator and Creature.
This journey of developing awareness from ego centric to God centric is characterised as a journey of enhancing immanence – transcendence. While Jung’s unconscious extremity is referred to as the self archetype, it should be noted that its nature is both mirror and window. As mirror it describes that which Jung has spoken of human experience from a psychological perspective. As window it points to the indefinable infinite reality of mind beyond human knowing, for being is beyond description. To name the infinite absolute is to destroy it.
[1] Panikkar, The Rhythm of Being : The Gifford Lectures, 34.
[2] ibid.
[3] ibid., 191.
[4] Edinger, Ego and Archetype, 3f.
[5] Wilber., Integral Psychology, Wilber 29.
[6] K Wilber, A Sociable God (Boston: Shambala Publications, 2005), 32.
[7] Wilber., Integral Psychology. Chart 6A 209