Philosopher Ken Wilber's Keynote Address at the Integral European Conference (IEC) 2018
(The Original Title of
Wilber’s Lecture)
Is Religion Evolution’s
Ally or Enemy?
LINK (in the public domain): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z9vyJDME7w&t=2118s
Published: Oct 1, 2018 / Accessed: 2021-05-11
(The numbers in-between parentheses are timestamps. Parts in blue are my own [jkk] annotations to Wilber’s talk. When parts are italicized within Wilber’s talk, those are my own emphases. Special thanks to my research assistant Christine Atchison for help with the transcription of Wilber's talk.)
[jkk
annotation] Have you ever wondered why religion can produce both the
best things and the worst things in the world? I think the best way to answer
that is by explaining religion through what is called “the Integral Theory.” I’ve
found that this talk of philosopher Ken Wilber, the major proponent and exponent
of the Integral Theory, is one of the best and most succinct-yet-complete
presentations that could help us gain a good “big picture” of religion – its
lights and shadows, its tremendous potential as well as its darkest
dysfunctionalities. This talk of Wilber titled “Is Religion Evolution’s Ally or
Enemy,” gives us an excellent overview of an understanding of religion and
spirituality that could help humanity advance through the proper developmental
stages and grow into a more mature and more holistic state as individuals and
as groups, and also experience the highest states of bliss that religious
traditions envision.
Introductory Remarks on Religion
in the West
Hello everybody, my talk is titled
‘Religion: Evolution’s Ally or Enemy?’. So let me start by asking ‘what are we
going to do with this thing called Religion?’ Around two or three hundred years
ago the percentage of people in, for example, [Northern] Europe who considered
themselves ‘churched’, that is, serious and regular followers of a traditional
church (in this case the Catholic Church) was well over 90 %. Today the
percentage of people in Northern Europe who consider themselves ‘churched’ is
less than 11%. The number of people who are followers of any sort of
traditional religion has dropped dramatically—especially in the modern,
developed countries. In the pre-modern or developing countries the numbers of
religious believers are much higher and, as we’ll see, there’s a reason for
that. But, in general—and this is the central point—the more evolved a country
is, the less religious it is. And this is true for individuals as well; the
more evolved a person is, the less religious they’re likely to be. Why is that?
Are religion and evolution the opposite of each other so that the more you have
of one, the less you have of the other? Is religion an ally of evolution or its
enemy?
Defining Terms: Spiritual Intelligence and Spiritual Experience
First of all, we need to understand what we mean by the word religion. There are at least two very different meanings of that word. One meaning is called religious intelligence or spiritual intelligence. It’s how we think about spirit, how we think about what we believe is an ultimate reality or ultimate concern. It’s how we interpret or conceptualize or think about ultimate reality. The other meaning is not spiritual intelligence but direct spiritual experience or immediate religious experience. Human beings have both capacities—spiritual intelligence and spiritual experience.
[jkk annotation] I would avoid using the word “religion” altogether because it has negative connotations nowadays in many circles. We can use terms with a more positive resonance for people today, such as the Japanese word ikigai (生き甲斐) or “spirituality”. “Human beings are spiritual beings” might be a foundational principle. Why? Because a person is usually animated and motivated to engage with life by interior and exterior factors that are “greater than (but also inclusive of) the physical.” That is just another way to say “spiritual.” Hence, the spiritual dimension plays a foundational and crucial role in humans.
In certain instances, like listening to beautiful music, walking in nature, making love, having a peak experience or an altered state of consciousness, humans can have a direct spiritual experience. William James explored these direct spiritual experiences in his classic book The Varieties of Religious Experience. But even if we have a direct spiritual experience, we almost always start interpreting it, conceptualizing it, giving it some sort of meaning or using some sort of conceptual framework—however simple—to make sense of it. So, as soon as we have any direct or religious or spiritual experience, we use our spiritual intelligence to interpret it, conceptualize it, frame it. We have spiritual experience and we have spiritual intelligence. (4:15)
Sometimes people have not had any direct spiritual experience, but they have lots of ideas and thoughts about what spirit is or what they think spirit is like. Most people have some sort of idea of what an ultimate reality is like, or at least what the most important reality or ultimate concern is for themselves. In other words, they have some form of spiritual intelligence, however vague or crude, but they have no direct spiritual experience. Some of these people even have very advanced spiritual intelligence. They’ve read texts from all the world’s great religions; they know all sorts of theological theories and ideas. They’ve thought a great deal about spirit and ultimate realities They might even have tried to weave together all of the latest leading-edge versions of modern science into a ‘new paradigm’ and then claim that this new paradigm represents a mystical, interwoven unity of all reality—just like Zen, or Daoism, or Vedanta. And yet, even though they believe this theory they themselves have never actually had a genuine spiritual experience in their life. So when it comes to spiritual reality they have lots of knowledge by description (or spiritual intelligence), but no direct knowledge by acquaintance (or direct spiritual experience, or satori, or enlightenment).
On the other hand, others have had a great deal of spiritual experience or several of them, but they can’t articulate it well or show how it relates to all the other areas of life. They have much spiritual experience but not much spiritual intelligence. These two forms of religious engagement—spiritual intelligence and spiritual experience—are very different in their fundamental nature and recognizing that difference is truly important, as we’ll see. These two forms cannot be completely separated from each other but they are different in several important ways and it’s crucial to recognize that difference. Spiritual experience, in its highest form, is claimed by its adherents to be a direct and immediate experience of pure one-ness with an ultimate reality.
This experience itself has been known in almost every major culture throughout history and around the world and given names such as enlightenment, awakening, metamorphosis, Satori, Moksha, Fanaa—the great liberation. And this is said to result in states described as ultimate unity consciousness, divine oneness, pure unity, infinite wholeness, or the supreme identity. Supreme because it is said to be one with spirit and thus one with the entire universe. And this oneness is said to constitute a person’s real self or true self. For the moment, simply assuming that something like this ultimate, religious, experience exists, I refer to this overall process in any of its forms as ‘waking up’. ‘Waking up’ is the ultimate form of spiritual experience. (8:22).
Spiritual intelligence, on the other hand, is one of up to a dozen multiple intelligences that all human beings possess. That is, in addition to cognitive intelligence we have emotional intelligence, moral intelligence, aesthetic intelligence, linguistic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence and, yes, spiritual intelligence. These are not so much experiences as they are intelligences. That is, mental operations that address fundamental questions faced by humans. Emotional intelligence, for example, addresses the issue of ‘what are you (or I) feeling?’. Moral intelligence addresses the question ‘what is the right thing to do?’. And spiritual intelligence is the thinking process that humans engage whenever they think about some sort of ultimate reality or ultimate concern. A person might use their spiritual intelligence and decide that there really isn’t any spirit or ultimate reality—they’re atheistic. Or they might conclude that they just can’t decide that issue—they’re agnostic. Or, as I said, they might look at today’s leading-edge sciences and come up with a new paradigm about a fully interwoven and unified nature. In any of those cases, they’re using their spiritual intelligence because they’re thinking about ultimate realities.
Note Well: Spiritual Intelligence, according to Wilber, is one of several multiple intelligences that human beings possess.
Now, like all multiple intelligences, spiritual intelligence grows and develops through a well-known sequence of developmental stages. People aren’t born with any of their multiple intelligences operating at their highest and most mature levels. Like all things in nature, any multiple intelligence has to grow and develop through a series of stages. Each stage being more functional, more complex, and more mature. The same is definitely true of spiritual intelligence. So, what stages does spiritual intelligence grow through? What stages are there? (11:05).
[jkk annotation] To summarize：Religion―Spirituality consists of two main factors：(1) Spiritual Experience and (2) Spiritual Intelligence. Traditional religions know #1 well; they unfortunately are largely unaware of #2 and hence they cannot “get” why religion has become irrelevant to many people in the West today.
