Why Believe? The Moral-Ethical Ground of Belief in a Transcendent Being

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTxFrxmY9dg&t=1222s  / Accessed 2020-04-15

(These are my notes [jkk's] on a lecture given by British philosopher of religion John Cottingham. It summarizes important arguments he makes in his book Why Believe [2009].)

The Fundamental Impetus of Belief 

The fundamental impetus or motor of belief in God in the tradition (particularly, in the Scriptures) is not in theoretical arguments or proofs about an omnipotent Being (although that is how it is usually discussed in the discipline called the philosophy of religion). The question of belief in the tradition is actually grounded first and foremost in morality,  in the question of 'how to live?'.

We can say then that the belief or faith is rooted in the moral and the experiential dimensions. The way we experience moral requirements and the way we experience, for example, the wonders of the natural world draw us to something beyond ourselves, to values that suggest the existence of something greater than ourselves. This can be a reason for why someone would choose to believe in a "Greater Something" commonly known as "God". 

Moral Values Make a Demand on Us

We can say that moral values make a "demand" on us: they require us to act in certain ways. For example, the goodness of compassion or the wrongness of cruelty makes a demand on us to be compassionate or to avoid  cruelty. That demand--we can say--suggests that certain things are inherently or even objectively good or evil, independently of our personal likes or dislikes. The demand that moral values make on us takes the general form 'do good and avoid evil'. 

What is the Ground of Morality Then?

One often hears these following questions that deal with the ground of morality. 

One is: Is morality a mere opinion or a "value judgment" of certain people? Is it just a question of certain people's opinion of how we should act in certain ways but without any objective ground for them? That kind of subjectivism was popular in the past. Now (according to John Cottingham) there is a preponderance among philosophers of a certain kind of objectivism which holds that there is a certain objective ground for why human beings should act in certain ways.

John Cottingham (JC) believes that this objectivism would be most "at home" in a belief in God, In other words, the best grounding of this objectivism would be the existence of a Transcencent Being, a kind of divine law-giver that has established objective moral principles. 

Are there other alternative sources for objectivity and morality? Human nature perhaps? This position would say that human nature itself is the source for why certain things are considered ethically right or wrong. That is certainly possible. But JC points out that human nature is not only good; it can be very imperfect or even downright evil. As the philosopher David Hume pointed out, "a particle of the dove is kneaded into our frame alongside elements of the wolf and serpent." JC therefore thinks that it can't be human nature alone that gives authority to certain moral principles. Traditional theism is a better option for giving us that objective authority. 

Some others may say moral values are just like mathematical values: they are simply true. JC finds the thought uninspiring that the basis for morality is like floating in an objective theoretical limbo. Again, he thinks that morality is better grounded in something such as traditional theism. 

And then there is an aesthetic component to this discussion. According to Immanuel Kant there are two things that inspire awe in us: the authority of the moral law and the starry heavens (the beauty of nature). That kind of "aesthetic" dimension (that elicits powerful human emotions) puts us in touch with a goodness that seems to be not merely a product of human nature but is grounded in a "Greater Something", a transcencent dimension that is the source of both the glory of the moral law and the wonders of nature.

So Why Believe Then?

So, why believe in a transcendent being? Why believe in God? We have seen that if we try to trace the possible source of why we humans are compelled to act and live in certain ways (i.e., avoiding evil and doing good - this is the moral-ethical dimension of life), we can glimpse that there might be a transcendent Being that is itself the objective source of all morality and ethics. Moreover, maintaining this moral order is itself a beautiful and glorious thing. This Transcendent Source of morality beckons us to trusting belief in it.

Of course, this does not prove God such as a mathematical proof would demonstrate some scientific principle. But John Cottingham thinks that it does support a belief in God/a Transcendent Being. 

**this summarizes John Cottingham's talk up 15:30***

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The Perennial Philosophy – Its Main Contours (acc to Roger Walsh)

Source: Roger Walsh, Essential Spirituality: The Seven Central Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind (Wiley, 1999), pp. 6-9.

[This is how spirituality teacher Roger Walsh MD, PhD explains the so-called "Perennial Philosophy." The main text is from Roger Walsh; my annotations (jkk) are found in brackets.]

The Perennial Philosophy

Thanks to global communication, for the first time in history, we have all the world's religions, their wisdom and their practices, available to us.  ... What do the different traditions have in common?

Beneath the hundreds of different cultures, claims, and customs, there lies a common core of both wisdom and practice at the heart of each authentic tradition. By "authentic tradition," I mean one capable of offering a direct experience of the sacred, and of fostering true spiritual growth and maturity in its practitioners. 

[The "direct experience of the sacred" is Roger Walsh's definition of spirituality. This is opposed to just believing in some teachings and doctrines because they were taught to you by some religious authorities. So if "a tradition" can offer a direct experience of the sacred, it can be considered an "authentic" (spiritual) tradition in Walsh's mind.]

Scholars called the essential common core of religious wisdom "the perennial wisdom" or "perennial philosophy." Why "perennial"? Because these profound insights into life have endured across centuries and cultures and have been taught by the great sages of all time

Developed over thousands of years, the perennial philosophy is a treasure house of humankind's curated wisdom. Vast in scope, profound in depth, it offers numberless insights into the nature of life and love, health and happiness, suffering and salvation.

At its heart lie four crucial claims--actually observations, since they are based on direct insights by advanced spiritual practitioners about reality and human nature.

[#1]  One. There are two realms of reality. The first is the every day realm with which we are all familiar, the world of physical objects and living creatures. This is the realm accessible to us via sight and sound and studied by sciences such as physics and biology.

But beneath these familiar phenomena lies another realm far more subtle and profound: a realm of consciousness, spirit, Mind or Tao (Way 道). This world cannot be known through the physical senses and only indirectly through the physical instruments of science. Moreover, this realm creates and embraces the physical realm and is its source. This domain is not limited by space or time or physical laws, and hence it is unbounded and infinite, timeless and eternal.

[This worldview was standard and widely accepted in practically all cultures of the world before the European Enlightenment. It is still the default worldview in traditional cultures and communities. Since the Enlightenment, the rational and scientific worldview has become standard in the West and in other parts of the world.]

[#2] Two. Human Beings partake of both realms. We are not only physical but also spiritual beings. We have bodies but we also have at the core of our being, in the depths of our minds a centre of transcendent awareness. This centre is described as pure consciousness, mind, spirit or Self and is known by such names as the neshamah  of Judaism, the soul or “divine spark” of Christianity, the atman of Hinduism or the "Buddha nature" of Buddhism. This divine spark is intimately related to--some traditions even say inseparable from and identical with--the sacred ground or foundation of all reality. We are not divorced from the sacred but eternally and intimately linked to it.

[#3] Three. Human beings can recognize their divine spark and the secret ground that is its source. What this implies--this is absolutely crucial--is that the claims of the perennial philosophy do not have to be accepted blindly. Rather each of us can test them for ourselves and decide their validity based on our direct experience.  Although the soul or innermost Self, being non-physical, cannot be known by the senses or the instruments of science, it can be known by careful introspection.

[Related to claim #3 is philosopher Ken Wilber's claim that the spiritual dimension can be experienced, and even validated through a process that is akin to what we know as a "scientific" method. See: http://spiritual-notandyet-religious-jkk.blogspot.com/2020/10/can-we-prove-existence-of-god-or-realm.html ]

This is not necessarily easy. Although anyone can be graced with spontaneous glimpses, clear sustained vision of our sacred depths usually requires significant practice to clarify awareness sufficiently. This is the purpose of spiritual practice. When the mind is still and clear, we can have a direct experience of our “Self.” This is not a concept of, nor an intellectual theory about, the Self. Rather, it is an immediate knowing, a direct intuition in which one not only sees the divine spark but also identifies with and recognizes that one is the spark. Sages from Judaism and Sufism, from Plato to Buddha, from Eckhart to Lao Tsu have agreed on this. 

…  Compared to this direct realization of the sacred, mere book learning and theoretical knowledge are very poor substitutes, as far removed from direct experience as a text on human reproduction is from the embrace of a lover. 

[#4] Four. The perennial philosophy's fourth claim is that realizing our spiritual nature is the summum bonum: the highest goal and greatest good of human existence. Beside this, all other goals pale; all other delights only partly satisfy. No other experience is so ecstatic, no other attainment so rewarding, no other goal so beneficial to oneself or others.  ...

Again this is not wild dogma to be accepted merely on the word of others or on blind faith. Rather, it is an expression of the direct experience of those who have tasted these fruits for themselves. Most importantly, it is an invitation to all of us to test and taste for ourselves.

***

If we distill these four claims down to their essential essence, what do we find? The central ringing cry of the perennial philsophy is this: We have underestimated ourselves tragically. We are sadly mistaken when we see ourselves as merely temporary bodies instead of timeless spirit; as separate, suffering selves instead of blissful Buddhas; as meaningless blobs of matter instead of blessed children of God. 

The words differ from one tradition to another but their central message is the same: You are more than you think! Look deep within, and you will find that your ego is only a tiny wave atop the vast ocean that is your real Self. Look deep within, and you will find that your ego is only a tiny wave atop the vast ocean that is your real Self. Look within, and at the center of your mind, in the depths of your soul, you will find your true Self, that this Self is intimately linked to the sacred, and that you share in the unbounded bliss of the sacred. 

This recognition is the goal of the great religions and it is known by names such as salvation and satori, enlightenment and liberation, fana and nirvana, awakening and Ruach Ha-qodesh. But whatever the name, the great religions all exist to help us discover our true Self and our true relationship to the sacred. This discovery, they agree, is the supreme joy and greatest goal of human life. 

The Perennial Practices

How to achieve this discovery of our true self is the central question of life, and it is here that the great religions offer their greatest gift. Each of them contains a set of practices designed to help us reach this goal. Whether they be the commandments and contemplations of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, the yogas of Hinduism, or the disciplines of Taoism, each tradition offers spiritual practices that awaken. 

Among the many spiritual practices, there are seven that are common to authentic religions and that we can therefore call perennial practices. These perennial practices were discovered by the religious founders and have been used by millions of men and women around the world. Now their universal nature can be recognized. Essential Spirituality (Walsh’s book) explains the seven perennial practices and offers exercises for applying them in all aspects of life so that you , too, can enjoy the many benefits they offer. 

[The heart of Roger Walsh's book 'Essential Spirituality' is to introduce readers to seven central practices to awaken mind and heart. For a summary of these practices, see: http://spiritual-notandyet-religious-jkk.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-seven-practices-that-awaken-heart.html  ]

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The "Religious Sense" as Described by Prof. Huston Smith

 

"The Religious Sense" according to Prof. Huston Smith

(with annotations by Julius-Kei Kato)

[Source]  Huston Smith, Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief (New York: Harper, 2001), 274.

(The main text is from Huston Smith. Sub-section titles, emphases, and annotations are my own -jkk)

 

[jkk] This is how the great teacher of world religions, the late Huston Smith, explained what he called the "religious sense." It is framed in an imagined letter that he writes to his colleagues who are
scientists and who tend to dismiss too easily the spiritual and religious dimensions of life in favour of a materialistic view of the universe.

 ***

Most simply stated, to be religiously "musical" ... is to possess a distinctive sensibility that I shall call the "religious sense." It has four parts that lock together into a single whole. 

[jkk] When you say, “Someone is musical,” that means: This person has a “sense for music.” This is applied by Huston Smith to a person’s “sense for religion.” I just want to observe here that, it seems, Huston Smith thinks that this “sense for religion” is not an accident but a fundamental characteristic of being human, hence, it is present in every single human being (see his remarks below). One just has to become more aware of it.

 

[#1] Ultimate Questions   The religious sense recognizes instinctively that the ultimate questions human beings ask--What is the meaning of existence? Why are there pain and death? Why, in the end, is life worth living? What does reality consists of and what is its object?--are the defining essence of our humanity. They are not just speculative imponderables that certain people of inquisitive bent get around to asking after they have attended to the serious business of working out strategies for survival (jkk-confer for example Maslowe’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’). They are the determining substance of what makes human beings human. This religious definition of human beings delves deeper than Aristotle's definition of man as a rational animal. In the religious definition, man is the animal whose rationality leads him to ask ultimate questions of the sort just mentioned. It is the intrusion of these questions into our consciousness that tells us most precisely and definitively the kind of creature we are. Our humanness flourishes to the extent that we steep ourselves in these questions--ponder them, circle them, obsess over them, and in the end allow the obsession to consume us.

[jkk] Asking ultimate questions is “the defining essence of our humanity.” Humans are, in Augustine's words, "restless until they rest in God." This is the "capax Dei" (“capability for God”) that the same Augustine refers to. There is a theory that <it is precisely because we can begin to imagine what the Ultimate is and that we strongly tend toward that Ultimate> that actually proves there is an ultimate. It is like the innate tendency of a sunflower to face the sun. This "tendency" somehow proves that there is a great source of light and heat. Do you agree or disagree?

 

[#2] The Ultimate Mysteriousness of Life   Following on the heels of the above, the religious sense is visited by a desperate, at times frightening, realization of the distance between these questions and their answers. As the urgency of the questions increases, we see with alarming finality that our finitude precludes all possibility of our answering them.

[jkk] ‘God’ and ‘the Meaning of It All’ remain, in the final analysis, profound “mysteries” because although we passionately search to understand these matters deeply, we will never succeed in answering them fully this side of the grave. They are the ultimate “limit” questions – questions that show us how limited we are in our ability to answer the profound mysteries of life.  Here the Catholic theologian Karl Rahner’s image (which could be applied to the human quest for God) comes in useful (Geist in Welt 1939. Smith also uses it in section #3 below). The human spirit, in its relentless pursuit of a greater something that could fulfill its most profound desires, can be described using the image of a quest to reach an ever-receding horizon: humans are continually drawn to search for the ultimate/the divine like one is drawn towards a beautiful horizon. However, one never actually reaches the horizon. This is symbolic of the fact that, on this side of life, humans will never fully comprehend the ultimate/the divine. The horizon that draws humans is, of course, the gracious mystery that Christianity calls “God”: mysterious because God is ultimately unfathomable, yet gracious because it is full of love

 

[#3] Continually Seeking for Answers to the Ultimate Questions   The conviction that the questions have answers never wavers, however, and this keeps us from giving up on them. Though final answers are unattainable, we can advance toward them as we advance toward horizons that recede with our every step. In our faltering steps toward the horizon we need all the help we can get, so we school ourselves to the myriad of seekers who have pondered the ultimate questions before us.  ... (there is a part here where he addresses scientists about their precursors) ... But it is easier in science to see what should be retained and what retired, for scientific truths are cumulative whereas religious truth is not. (jkk: I don't exactly understand what he means by that. I think it means: in every valid and up-to-date scientific statement, all the valid, past results of science are already implicitly presupposed and included. That is not true for religious statements.)  This requires that we keep dialoguing with our past as seriously as this book has tried to do, while also dialoguing expectantly with our present (which this book has also tried to do).

[jkk] Here we see why continuing to ask “perplexing questions” (even the ultimately unanswerable ‘ultimate’ questions) is important. <“Asking” and “Living” these perplexing existential questions> is a fundamental part of being human and the sure way to go deeper into the human spiritual journey. 

In a letter written to a young protégé, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke said, “I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer” (Letters to a Young Poet).

 

[#4] A Communal Effort to Pursue the Ultimate Questions   Finally, we conduct our search together--collectively, in congregations as you do in your laboratories and professional societies. Emile Durkheim, the nineteenth century sociologist, thought religion was entirely a social affair, a reification of the shared values of the tribe. Today our individualistic society comes close to assuming the opposite, that religion is altogether an individual affair. ... As usual the Buddha walked the middle path. "Be ye lamps unto yourselves," for sure; but do not forget that the sangha (the monastic community, and by extension the company of the holy) is one of the Three Jewels of Buddhism.

[jkk] “Community” is an integral part of all religious and spiritual paths because <sharing one’s life and experiences with others> is essential to realizing our true nature. That “true nature” is -- that we are all interconnected and one with Spirit. Conducting the search together is also a means to verify and authenticate one’s religious or spiritual experience – it is, moreover, a means to guard against being self-deluded in our efforts to touch Spirit. Just as in science, an experiment conducted in one center should be replicated in other centers in order to confirm the validity of the original results; so too in spirituality, we have to verify our experiences of Spirit with other spiritual practitioners so as to see the validity of our own experiences.

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The Seven Practices that Awaken Heart and Mind - Roger Walsh (Summary)

 

Sources:

·         Roger Walsh, Essential Spirituality [ES] (Wiley, 1999).

·         What do religions have in common? (interview with Roger Walsh): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45zKtNpQPz4&list=WL&index=35&t=149s

Roger Walsh was trained in medicine and psychotherapy. At a certain point in his psychotherapy training, he was astounded to discover a fascinating interior world that exists within himself, something he wasn’t much aware of before like many people in the contemporary world who live superficially at the level of the exterior. This intrigued him and prompted him to explore the world’s religious and spiritual-wisdom traditions because they have offered the world time-tested methods to deal with this important interior dimension.

     As a result of his research he published Essential Spirituality: The 7 Central Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind in 1999. Here he distills the practical wisdom offered by various spiritual-wisdom traditions in order to live life fully and realize our full nature into seven central practices. The book explains these practices extensively in the different chapters with various helpful and practical suggestions to apply each practice more concretely into daily life in the form of “exercises.”  

The seven perennial practices are:

(1) transform your motivation: reduce craving and find your soul's desire;

(2) cultivate emotional wisdom: heal your heart and learn to love;

(3) live ethically: feel good by doing good;

(4) concentrate and calm your mind;

(5) awaken your spiritual vision: see clearly and recognize the sacred in all things;

(6) cultivate spiritual intelligence: develop wisdom and understand life; and

(7) express spirit in action: embrace generosity and the joy of service.

 

Further Elaboration on the Seven Practices 

(descriptions are by jkk)

[1] Transform your motivation: Reduce craving and find your soul's desire

Keywords: desire, craving, attachment 

Humans have many "wants," "desires," and "cravings." Many times, these are for things that do not bring authentic happiness and deep meaning in life. The first practice consists in the effort to reduce and eliminate "lower" desires. It then continues to enable one to search for one’s deeper, nobler and higher desires—the ones that bring us genuine meaning and authentic happiness. 

Sample Exercises: Frustrate an addiction; Recognize pain as feedback; Dedicate an activity to a higher purpose

 

[2] Cultivate emotional wisdom: Heal your heart and learn to love

Keywords: emotional wisdom, healing, "love"

Acquiring "emotional wisdom" refers to: knowing how to deal with difficult emotions (fear, anxiety, etc.), processing shadows and hurts (through acceptance and forgiveness) and, more positively, acquiring good emotional virtues such as compassion and gratitude.

Sample Exercises: Heal an emotional hurt; Give a gift to someone you don’t like; Say grace; Spend a day of thankfulness

 

[3] Live ethically: Feel good by doing good

Keywords: Ethical living

Living ethically is the concrete fruit that spirituality produces. It does not only benefit others - it benefits yourself as well. It will make you experience a genuine and deep peace and happiness.

Sample Exercises: Give up gossip; Communicate to heal; Right a wrong

 

[4] Concentrate and calm your mind

Keywords: Calming the mind, Concentration

The focus of this practice is taming the "monkey mind" - that is, our distracted, wandering, restless minds and hearts. This is an absolute condition for developing spirituality. I understand “spirituality” to be: paying attention to the "scientifically non-quantifiable" aspects of ourselves and engaging seriously in the human quest for meaning, depth and transcendence. Walsh describes “spirituality” as “a direct experience of the Sacred.”

Sample Exercises: Do one thing at a time with mindfulness; Take regular breath meditations; Transform interruptions into wakeup calls

 

[5] Awaken your spiritual vision: see clearly and recognize the sacred in all things

Keywords: Vision, seeing, the Sacred

When you're able to be calm and concentrate, it's time to acquire a new way of viewing and understanding the world - this is the way by which you can see that the "Sacred" is what holds the whole world. The Sacred (Spirit, the Greater Power, the Numinous, God) is actually the core and ground of everything; it also encompasses all things.

Sample Exercises: Eat mindfully; Become a good listener; See teachers everywhere; Recognize the sacred in nature

[6] Cultivate spiritual intelligence: develop wisdom and understand life

Keywords: spiritual intelligence, wisdom

I consider this the effort to "take practice #5 a notch higher." We don't stop at having new eyes to view the world. We go further on our spiritual quest and strive to acquire wisdom to understand more deeply the true nature and meaning of life, of humanity, of the world, of reality.

Sample Exercises: Commit time to silence and solitude; Practice spiritual reading; Enjoy the company of the wise 

 

[7] Express spirit in action: embrace generosity and the joy of service

Keywords: action, service

Our transformed heart and mind; our new vision, our deepening wisdom - all of these bear concrete fruit not only in ethical living but in various forms of compassionate service for our fellow humans. Again, this does not only benefit others; it actually benefits ourselves first.

Sample Exercises: Turn work into service; Change pain into compassion; Pay something forward; Give anonymously

 

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Can We Prove the Existence of God? [or the Realm of Spirit?]

This is Part 2 of a series in Patheos.com in which Philosopher Ken Wilber tries to answer some "Big Questions" of Life. The annotations are by Julius-Kei Kato 

(The main text is of Ken Wilber. The subheadings, emboldened and underlined parts are added by the annotator. My (jkk) further reflections and observations are in italicized form.)

Source in the public domain (accessed 2020-10-08): https://www.patheos.com/blogs/kenwilberwakeupgrowup/2014/04/can-we-prove-the-existence-of-god-the-big-question-series-question-2/  

It always comes down to that: “How can you prove the existence of Spirit or God if you’re so convinced that it exists?” Part of the problem is that we tend to try to prove Sprit’s existence with tools that can’t actually do the job. And we tend to be unaware of the type of tools that can prove Spirit’s existence. So I’ll run through what some of those are, and give an example of what’s involved.

[jkk] This is especially fascinating for me because it is usually said, “we cannot prove the existence of Spirit (or of God).” I myself also say this and I still maintain that there is no direct, empirical way to “prove God” such as can be done in empirical experiments. However, here Ken Wilber claims that there is a “kind of” scientific way to prove the “greater reality” (the realm that transcends our physical reality). I encourage you to reflect on whether this proposed method is “scientific”for you.  After all, in our secularized age, the “scientific” way of making one’s points is deemed to be the best way.

The Method to Access the Spirit-Dimension

So it’s actually very experimental and very scientific. It rests on the fact that there is a scientific method, and this method can be applied to any number of domains. It can be applied to the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of contemplation.

So what is this method? Very briefly, it has three major components. [#1 “Injunction” or “Eperiment”] It has an injunction or experiment or exemplar, which is always in the form of “if you want to know this, do this.” And once you do that, it results in an experience, or what William James called a datum, or an illumination—some sort of [#2 Experience] direct immediate experience. And that’s the second strand. And then that experience or data is [#3 Verification] checked with others to make sure that they get the same results, to make sure that you’re not hallucinating or getting it wrong or somehow confused.

So let’s say, using the eye of flesh, we want to know if it’s raining outside. Very simply, we go to the window and look. That’s the injunction—if you want to know if it’s raining outside, go to the window and look. We look, and yes it does indeed seem to be raining. That’s our experience, our data, our illumination. We do the injunction and we have an experience, we see the data. To make sure that we’re not hallucinating or otherwise mistaken, we ask someone else to take a look as well. They go to the window and yup, they see it raining too. So that’s our confirmation or verification, our third major strand.

[jkk] Remember the three phases: #1 Experiment - #2 Experience - #3 Verification of the Experience (with others who are having the same or similar experiences). That does seem like a “scientific” way to prove something, right?

Further Elaboration

All science has those three strands. When applied to the eye of flesh we get physics, chemistry, biology, and so on. When applied to the eye of mind we get things like logic and mathematics. But what’s not often understood is that it can be applied to the eye of contemplation as well. And here it offers proof of the existence of Spirit, every bit as real as rain or mathematics.

So what we’re talking about is that there’s sensory experience, there’s mental experience, and there’s spiritual experience, and each of these experiences give particular types of data or information or knowledge. Too often we have attempted to try to prove the existence of Spirit by using the eye of flesh and the eye of mind. Aristotle’s proof of God, he gave five proofs, and they were all logical. But that won’t get it—it doesn’t touch Spirit, it doesn’t activate the spiritual dimension in us.

So if we want to see how it can operate in a spiritual practice, we can take Zen as an example. The injunction here, the practice or exemplar, is zazen or meditation or contemplation. You’re taught to sit in a relaxed position, rest the mind, and focus it on one item. It could be following the breath, or it might be an inquiry like “who am I?” And this is the first strand, the injunction or activity or exemplar—if you want to know whether Spirit is real, do this.

After anywhere from several months to a year or two, you will start having a series of experiences, interior data or illuminations. These profound experieces or experieces of a spiritual nature are called kensho, which means “seeing into true nature.” This is strand two, the direct experience Spirit itself—naked, unmediated, real, and direct. This direct religious experience is said to be of Spirit itself. Even in the case of individuals who have a Ph.D in science and who experience kensho, over 95% report that kensho is as real as anything that they study in conventional science. It’s a very powerful, convincing experience.

And just recently someone had an experience that for some reason made all the news, a neuroscientist who had a near death experience, but it was so real to him that he was simply, absolutely, 100% convinced that this was a real experience, as real as anything he had ever experienced. That’s exactly the same kind of feeling that mystics have when they have a kensho, or a mystical experience, or an experience of oneness or unity. And he said he couldn’t find it described anywhere until he was looking through some Christian mysticism books and he found an explanation that spoke of infinite darkness suffused with luminosity. And he said that was it exactly! Anyone who knows the stages of meditation will recognize that as a causal state, it’s described that way in every major meditative tradition the world over. But of course we’ve so forgotten about this in the West that we just don’t know where to look. So he was completely confused until he found that one particular explanation.

Check with the Community of Practitioners

After the individual has had their unity experience, their awakening experience, just to make sure, they check with a spiritual teacher and a community of practitioners. Now this means all those who have completed the first two strands. If you want to vote on whether the Pythagorean theory is real, you have to learn mathematics, and then learn the Pythagorean theorem, and once you have completed the injunction and have had the experience of looking at the triangle and looking at the Pythagorean theorem, then you’re allowed to vote and confirm or not confirm whether it’s real. Most people who do that report that the Pythagorean Theorem is real.

     But the same thing is true in any other scientific experiment, and it’s true for this interior science of contemplation. So you check it with a spiritual teacher and a community of practitioners, all those who have completed the first two strands of injunction and illumination, just to make sure you’re not hallucinating or otherwise confused, just like in all the other sciences. If their illumination, the discovery of their own True Self that is one with Spirit, matches those in a larger community of knowledge-holders, then their kensho (見性 Japanese, “seeing the true nature of things”) is passed and their realization is confirmed.

[jkk] I want to underline the fact that Wilber calls the study of the transcendent realm the “interior science of contemplation.” By that, he implies that there is this realm of Spirit, this transcendent dimension that we can directly know, experience, and validate (the existence of) through methods and a process that are quite scientific. What is “the community of practitioners” anyway? In practically every religious tradition (Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, etc.), there are groups of people (both in the past and in the present) who have had direct, religious-spiritual experiences of the Sacred and the Transcendent. These people were/are able to have these spiritual experiences through methods of spiritual practice such as meditation, service, ethical living, training in compassion, etc. that are time-tested and proven in these religious traditions to effectively transform people and lead them to wisdom, peace, compassion and authentic happiness.

Direct Experience – Public Knowledge

So notice this is a real science, a direct and immediate 1^st-person experience. It’s not anything taken on faith or mere belief, but a direct realization. And this is true whether the contemplation is Christian, or Buddhist, or Jewish, or Islamic, or Hindu, and so on. And this realization proves that Spirit is just as real as mathematics, or logic, or rain, or rocks. And those who have had that experience, even if they have Ph.Ds in science, take it as being as real as anything that they know. So it’s as real as “real” has any meaning. It’s a direct injunction, giving immediate data or illumination, and checked with a community of the adequate.

This is why contemplative knowledge is public knowledge, in both the East and the West it has been passed down for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. That’s not private knowledge. Anything that can be trained and passed down is public, and it all reaches that same conclusion: God is real, and tat tvam asi—you are that.

[jkk] Let me continue to comment on the nature of the time-tested spiritual practices of the world’s religious-spiritual traditions. Studies have been done of these spiritual practices and one can say that across the various religious-spiritual traditions of the world, there are striking commonalities in the spiritual practices that are encouraged and taught in order to be spiritually transformed. One notable study is Roger Walsh, M.D. Ph.D.’s Essential Spirituality: The Seven Central Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind. There Walsh distills many of the practices from various religious-spiritual traditions into seven general principles that spiritual practitioners across the ages have observed to be continually transformed and renewed.

Wilber and Walsh also emphasize that spiritual transformation and direct experience of the Sacred NEED NOT BE just taken on faith or believed in blindly (as is often encouraged by religious institutions) without proof. Wilber and Walsh encourage people to, as it were, “check it out for themselves” by actually engaging in the time-tested spiritual practices because if they do, the practitioners will in time experience for themselves the truth that there is indeed a spiritual realm and that realm will transform the person who wakes up to it and continually grows more fully into it.  

 

---

[2] The Sixth Paradigm [R. Holloway--Different Paradigm Shifts in Christianity] - Part 2

 Source (in the public domain): http://radicalfaith.org/holloway/sixth%20paradigm.htm

From a talk Holloway gave in May 2003

Accessed: 2020-09-03

Go to Part 1 

The Sixth Paradigm  [Different Paradigm Shifts in Christianity] - continued

Richard Holloway (former Episcopal Bishop of Edinburgh)

 

PARADIGM #4: The Protestant Reformation Paradigm

Kung's fourth paradigm (P#4) is one we're more immediately familiar with - that of the 16^th century Protestant Reformation. It happened to coincide with the discovery of the Bible by ordinary people. Once the new printing presses had swung into action, many thousands of copies of the Bible became available to the person on the street. It was very soon translated from Latin into the vernaculars.

Just as the Roman institution had provided Christians with a feeling of absolute assurance, so also some people found a similar assurance in the words of Scripture. The absolute institution was replaced by texts which were perceived as the absolute truth straight from the mouth of God. The fourth paradigm promoted the same need for authority as did the third paradigm and pandered to the same fear of freedom.

More profound than such similarities is the way adherence to scriptural inerrancy prevents attempts to do theology differently. In order to preserve its internal consistencies, this paradigm must perforce retain an absolute commitment to a pre-scientific paradigm of how this world works.

In this paradigm the sun must be able to stand still, people must be able to walk on water, and the dead must be able to rise again. In contrast, institutions like the Roman Church can change and yet pretend they haven't. But how can anyone move off a doctrine of scriptural inerrancy without admitting it?

From study of the Bible as God's Word to humankind came the great theory that Luther evolved in contradistinction to the fundamentalism if the institution. It's nearly impossible for many Christians today to read Paul's letters to the early Church except through Lutheran eyes, so compelling was Luther's interpretation of the infallible authority of the Bible.

Luther taught that God saves us not through any of our own works or good deeds, be they pilgrimages, or masses or earnest prayer, but only through God's grace by the sacrifice of the Father's son. That really was a paradigm revolution for those times. It blew away the monolithic medieval Christianity of Roman Catholicism.

The Reformation church is today perhaps the most dated in feeling of all the churches.

I don't know if you ever go into a United Reformed Church building or a Presbyterian church. A few have developed new liturgical forms and norms, but on the whole the classic churches of the Reformation are, as we say in Scotland, very dour. They're heavy. You get long sermons. They may be very thoughtful sermons but they're long. It's all minister-dominated. There's no colour or brightness. It's very heavy, it's serious, it's intense.

That is also it's enduring value. It produces very serious people. Presbyterian Scotland was a very serious country which, by dint of focused effort over many years, produced a strongly democratic consciousness.

It also gave birth to the Protestant work-ethic. This was fundamental to Scotland's experience and self understanding. From this paradigm sprang also a well-educated public. John Knox, the Scottish Protestant reformer, wanted a school in every parish and largely succeeded in his ambition.

Despite this enduring value, the Reformation remnant of the fourth paradigm remains depressing and sexless. If you want to have a good time, don't go to one of these places on a Sunday morning. For unless you're solidly masochistic you'll come out feeling pretty rotten about yourself.

I often think that if you want a great exemplar of the virtues and maybe of the downside of the Reformation paradigm, look at Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom's Chancellor of the Exchequer (equivalent to the Minister of Finance in other systems). He is a deeply serious man. There doesn't seem to be any frivolity in him. He's deeply committed to his project - but he's not exactly a laugh a minute (although I'm told that with some decent malt whiskey beside him he can be quite good company). But there's no sense of frivolity of skittishness about him. In many ways he's a brilliant exemplar of the best of the fourth paradigm.

***

PARADIGM #5: The Modern Era Paradigm

The fifth paradigm (P#5) is the modern paradigm, that of the 17^th - 19^thcenturies. It is still powerfully with us, busily influencing and interpreting how we perceive the world and our lives. Nevertheless, we're increasingly able to regard it to some degree dispassionately as we sail into new and unfamiliar seas.

[1] The Sixth Paradigm [R. Holloway--Different Paradigm Shifts in Christianity] - Part 1

Source (in the public domain): http://radicalfaith.org/holloway/sixth%20paradigm.htm

From a talk Holloway gave in May 2003

Accessed: 2020-09-03

 

The Sixth Paradigm  [Different Paradigm Shifts in Christianity]

Richard Holloway (former Episcopal Bishop of Edinburgh)

 

I want to take a glance at the whole of Christian history because one of the things I'd like to get at is this widespread notion that Christianity is or ever has been a single thing.

To do this I'll use a large text, but I want to lead into it by addressing first a very slim text.

One of the most important and influential philosophical texts of the twentieth century was a short book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions written by an historian of science called Thomas Kuhn. Now Kuhn was a student at Harvard in the 1960s. He was a young physicist and was invited by the President of Harvard to teach a course on the history of science to humanities students who knew nothing about science. He said to himself, "You don't refuse the President of Harvard!"

In his researches and preparing the course he surprised himself. He came across something that he had not hitherto realised was the case. He had a notion of science as a kind of linear activity - a bit like those machines in a coal mine which eat into the coal face - which bites its way through the facts of the universe. He thought of science as a cumulative process in which these facts were gradually laid out.

He discovered that it was in fact a more violent, interruptive activity. Hence the title of his essay. He discovered that science operates by what he called "paradigm revolutions" or "paradigm shifts". He didn't actually coin the word "paradigm" but he did give it a new kind of meaning. He said that the scientific community worked within what it called a paradigm, a constellation of views based on experiment, a world view or set of assumptions that it operated within. This was the going, working science of the time.

The paradigm was operated until it stopped working - that is, until new questions or new discoveries began to collide with the given view. Let me give you a fairly obvious example.

Aristotelian astronomy, upon which the worldview of the entire Bible is based, proposed a three-decker universe with the earth at the centre and all the spheres going round it. The whole idea was that the earth is the centre of the system both physically as well as theologically.

That was the going paradigm. And it still works. The Ptolemaic version of Aristotelian astronomy can still operate for a yachtsperson. You can cross the Atlantic using Ptolemaic astronomy, guiding your boat by the stars. So to that extent it can still be a working paradigm.

But it was overtaken by the great Copernican discovery which was revolutionary because it said, "Ah! The earth is not the thing which everything else goes round. In fact, we go round the sun."

You'll recall the great struggle which then took place. This was because the new paradigm appeared to contradict both the biblical account as well as the going scientific paradigm. Interestingly, it was only fairly recently that the Pope gave the sun permission to be the centre of the solar system.

What happens then is that you get a working set of systems which operates quite satisfactorily until along comes new knowledge, usually discovered by creatures of genius. They begin to ask questions about the old paradigm. Those who use the old paradigm resist the new - and it is entirely right that they should do so. One doesn't want to keep changing a world view which works. It's a confounded nuisance if you're switching paradigms every few years. You need to get traction, a bit of tradition and leverage on the thing.

So you make it work as long as you possibly can. You use it to try to answer the new information which is coming in. There's also in some people a natural kind of conservatism which doesn't like any kind of change. They prefer the going paradigm to anything which is coming down the road. They do so for purely temperamental reasons - but it's also true that the scientific method itself inherently tests new data until it overturns the old. And then you get a paradigm revolution and you move on.

Kuhn's little book has influenced philosophers, culture critics and theologians since the early 1960s. I want to look now at a great text which has applied Kuhn's conclusions about paradigms to Christianity.

The greatest living theologian is Hans Kung, a Roman Catholic. His is the "large text" to which I referred earlier. He doesn't have the Pope's driving licence because he wrote a book in the seventies attacking the doctrine of infallibility and he had his licence to teach withdrawn.

He still teaches theology at Tübingen University but he teaches it in a secular setting (2020-no longer teaching). Quite movingly, he's an old man now and he would like to get his licence back. He'd like to die, as it were, in peace with the Roman Church. But he has been told that he will only get the licence back if he commits to the doctrine of infallibility.

So he will have to sacrifice his conscience to get back inside the Church (which shows you how corrupt churches are). I doubt if he will do that because his whole being has been one of challenge. He's been a sort of Protestant theologian in the midst of Catholicism.

Kung set himself a few years ago an enormous task. He wanted to describe the religious situation of our day. He conceived three volumes - one on Christianity, one on Judaism and one on Islam (2020-they are all published).

He applies paradigm theory to religion. He says that contrary to what we all think, religion has been a story of shifting paradigms - an essentially dynamic, changing enterprise.

I want to race through his application of paradigm theory to Christianity. He says there have been five Christian paradigms. As we'll see, these paradigms are all still in operation. In science, new paradigms succeed, complete and often oust those that came before. In Christianity, religious paradigms never seem to get discarded or superannuated. They simply get stacked up like trays in the trolleys of self-service restaurants.

[5] A Summary of the History of Christianity: A "Paradigm Shift" Approach (Part 5)

 

A Summary of the History of Christianity (by Hans Küng)

(with annotations and revisions done by Julius-Kei Kato)

Go to Part 4

Part 5 - Paradigm #5 : The Modern Era Paradigm - Challenges to Christianity 

We will refer to sub-divisions of this article by the section numbers within square brackets (e.g. [1]).

Resources:

Original Link to this Summary (in the public domain / accessed 2020-09-20): https://www.global-ethic-now.de/gen-eng/0b_weltethos-und-religionen/0b-01-02-christentum/0b-01-0201-jesus.php

Paradigm Shifts in Christianity (a one-page visual diagram) https://www.global-ethic-now.de/gen-eng/0b_weltethos-und-religionen/0b-pdf/paradigm-shifts-christianity.pdf

 

[17] Revolutions of the Modern Age

René Descartes (1596–1650)

Was the father of modern rationalist philosophy and marked a “Copernican Revolution” in the way of thinking: the whole of reality is constituted by the human subject (“I think therefore I am” Latin, Cogito ergo sum)

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642)

Was the protagonist of the new empirical-mathematical natural science which was the basis for the technological and industrial revolution that reached its first climax in the 19^th century

Cardinal Richelieu [Armand Jean du Plessis] (1585–1642)

Was the mastermind and practitioner of a new understanding of the State and of politics: what counts is not the confessional or religious-moral point of view but rather practical politics in pursuit of national interests. The state is the natural product of a contract between the people and their rulers and is thus autonomous in relation to the Church.

The French Revolution

In the wake of runaway inflation and mass misery, the Estates-General convened in May 1789. In
June, the Third Estate, representing 98% of the population over against clergy and nobility, proclaimed itself to be the “National Assembly” and challenged the power of the king. On July 14, 1789, the people of Paris took up arms (“Storm the Bastille”). On Aug. 4, the National Assembly abolished feudalism, putting an end to the “Ancien Régime”, and on Aug. 26, it proclaimed the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.”

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)

The basic principle of the Declaration was that all “men are born and remain free and equal in rights” (Article 1), which were specified as the rights of liberty, private property, the inviolability of the person, and resistance to oppression (Article 2). All citizens were equal before the law and were to have the right to participate in legislation directly or indirectly (Article 6); no one was to be arrested without a judicial order (Article 7). Freedom of religion (Article 10) and freedom of speech (Article 11) were safeguarded within the bounds of public “order” and “law.” The document reflects the interests of the elites who wrote it: property was given the status of an inviolable right, which could be taken by the state only if an indemnity were given (Article 17); offices and position were opened to all citizens (Article 6).

 

[18] Challenges to the Christian Churches in the Future

1. Dialogue with other confessions and, in time, with other religions.

2. Demands of the Enlightenment: freedom of religion and of conscience, freedom of assembly, of speech and of the press.

3. Leading values: “rationality”, “progress”, “nation”.

4. Relativization of Christianity in European guise: instead of a Europe-centered Christian perspective on the world, a multi-centred worldview embracing diverse regions and religions.

 

--END OF SERIES 5/5--

[4] A Summary of the History of Christianity: A "Paradigm Shift" Approach (Part 4)

A Summary of the History of Christianity (by Hans Küng)

(with annotations and revisions done by Julius-Kei Kato)

Go to Part 3

Part 4 - Paradigm #4 : Martin Luther & The Protestant Reformation Paradigm

We will refer to sub-divisions of this article by the section numbers within square brackets (e.g. [1]).

Resources:

Original Link to this Summary (in the public domain / accessed 2020-09-20): https://www.global-ethic-now.de/gen-eng/0b_weltethos-und-religionen/0b-01-02-christentum/0b-01-0201-jesus.php

Paradigm Shifts in Christianity (a one-page visual diagram) https://www.global-ethic-now.de/gen-eng/0b_weltethos-und-religionen/0b-pdf/paradigm-shifts-christianity.pdf

 

[12] Martin Luther - Life

1483  Birth in Eisleben.
1505  Entry into the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt.
1512  Professor in Wittenberg.
1517  Publication of the “Ninety-five Theses” against indulgences.
1520  Papal bull threatening excommunication if he does not retract. Luther publicly burns the papal bull.
1521  Luther is excommunicated. He stands up to his writings at the Diet of Worms, he and his followers are put under the ban (Edict of Worms). Luther is hidden till 1522
in Wartburg Castle, where he begins his translation of the Bible.
1525  The Peasants’ War. Luther got married and broke with Erasmus of Rotterdam.

1529  Marburg Colloquy with Huldrych Zwingli and Martin Bucer.
1541  Jean Calvin established a theocratic republic in Geneva.
1546  Luther dies in Eisleben

 

 

[13] Luther’s Program

Luther’s program: Return to the Gospel of Jesus Christ

Bible

In place of innumerable ecclesiastic traditions, laws and authorities, the Holy Scriptures alone serve as the criterion of being Christian – translation of the Bible into the language of the people so that everyone could understand it

Christ

In place of innumerable saints and official mediators, Jesus Christ alone serves as the Mediator of humans before God

Grace

In place of ecclesiastically imposed pious deeds to merit salvation, believers find justification before God not through their works, but through grace alone, which cannot be earned, but is received through faith alone. Grace is unconditional.

Church

In place of the medieval clerical hierarchy, the Church is the community of believers, a congregation that prays and sings together.

 

 

[3] A Summary of the History of Christianity: A "Paradigm Shift" Approach (Part 3)

 A Summary of the History of Christianity (by Hans Küng)

(with annotations and revisions done by Julius-Kei Kato)

Go to Part 2

Part 3 - Paradigm #3 : The Medieval Roman Catholic Paradigm 

We will refer to sub-divisions of this article by the section numbers within square brackets (e.g. [1]).

Resources:

Original Link to this Summary (in the public domain / accessed 2020-09-20): https://www.global-ethic-now.de/gen-eng/0b_weltethos-und-religionen/0b-01-02-christentum/0b-01-0201-jesus.php

Paradigm Shifts in Christianity (a one-page visual diagram) https://www.global-ethic-now.de/gen-eng/0b_weltethos-und-religionen/0b-pdf/paradigm-shifts-christianity.pdf

[8] Rome: Primacy of Honour in the Early Church and the Process of Latinization

•         The Jewish roots of Christianity were forgotten by a church characterized first by Greek then by Latin culture.

•         In Rome, between 360 and 382, Latin replaced Greek as the language of the liturgy.

•         The basilica, originally a large hall for secular affairs, became the model of church architecture.

•         The thanksgiving meal (Eucharist) was gradually transformed into
a sacrificial offering: the table became an altar.

 

 

[9] The Pope – Successor of St Peter? – “No”, “Yes”, or “It’s Complicated”?

•         No evidence in the New Testament that Peter was in Rome.

•         No evidence for an immediate “successor” to Peter, not even in Rome.

•         No mention of a bishop of Rome in the New Testament or in the earliest Christian sources …

•         not in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and not in the Letter of the Romans to the Corinthians.

 

•         Nevertheless, early evidence for the graves of the apostles Peter and Paul in Rome.

•         Around the middle of the 3rd Century, Bishop Stephen of Rome viewed himself as the successor of Peter and claimed a primacy over all other bishops.

•        (this part by jkk) Historically speaking then, it seems that the following idea: <the Pope is the literal successor of Peter who holds full authority [over all bishops in the Christian world], received in an unbroken chain of tradition going from the present pope all the way up to Peter himself who, in turn, received his authority as pope from Jesus himself> has to be re-evaluated very critically. It is not true in the literal sense. It can be considered an anachronism because the popes increasingly claimed this only later in history. The Eastern Orthodox churches (some of which are even older than Rome itself) have not accepted this. It remains the main block to unity among Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. However, it is true that the pope as bishop of Rome has had a unique place of honour (a “primacy of honour” and primus inter pares “first among equals”) in the history of Christianity from ancient times.  (jkk)