The Integral Message
Relational Spirituality for The Integral World Dialogue
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Ewert Cousin’s asks how we might emulate Raimon Panikkar’s integral way of living. The great challenge lying before us is the artificial world Panikkar describes us living within. While he presents his version of the emerging integral world based upon the inter-dependent dance of life engaged in by Creator, Creation and Creature, the key to opening the door to this new world vision is dialogue.
He is particular about his description of dialogue. He contrasts two approaches to dialogue. Traditionally dialogue is dialectical in that we discuss in conversation our ideas. In our globalising, inter-faith, inter-racial world he calls for a development in dialogue. He speaks of a dialogical dialogue, whereby one seeks to experientially engage with others to not only intellectually hear the others story, but dare to enter their world of living. The qualifying of this is not necessarily becoming the same as the other, but once knowing in the deepest sense of the others world, returning to one’s former position but enriched by the experience.
Relational Spirituality is a model for living the integral non-dual, inter-dependent spirituality of Panikkar’s cosmos-theos-andros world. Whereas Panikkar speaks of the inter-relational reality of Creator, Creation and Creature, Relational Spirituality replicates the same inter-relational world of God, neighbour and Self. This Jewish summary of the law of love, was affirmed by Jesus in answer to the lawyers search for eternal life. The story recorded in detail and context it reads,
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Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “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; and your neighbour as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live." (Lk 10:25-28)
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The dynamic inter-relational nature of God, neighbour and self, becomes clear when reviewing the call to love when examining the contemporary knowledge of the three significant trends of life pursued by people seeking meaning in the twenty-first century.
In this context Meditation, self-knowledge and social justice, when viewed with integral non-dual awareness, is seen as three windows of the one comprehensive vision of love. They are not three, but the fulness of the one. As Relational Spirituality, I present it as offering humanity a practical model for navigating the journey into the world of the new integral consciousness which will characterise life in the new millennium.
The challenge is articulating what is understood by relationality in the world of the emerging integral consciousness when we are looking for something beyond a mental exercise, a much more comprehensive knowing. As has been discussed, its essential character is its non-duality. While this is not new to human experience, the change spoken of by scholars from Wilber to Gebser is that a non-dual capacity is emerging in significantly increasing numbers of people, from the common person to the elite specialist. Many insightful contributors are articulating the new understanding and revealing examples of non-duality in a new approach to life.