Mysticism and Development
- Can mysticism improve your cognitive and creative abilities and stimulate your overall development?
POLILOGUES = WORLDVIEWS
The bottom line, though, as Geert has said already, is that Polilogues is about worldviews. The world looks different from the perspective of each person who beholds it. But when we dig down into the invisible memetic mycelium that connects people in a culture, we start to find deeper, shared worldviews, based on assumptions about the nature of life and reality that people espouse unthinkingly and often never question from birth to death. Dig down deeper still and we creep into the miraculous gossamer dimensions where psychology is not other than biology is not other than astronomy and the individual and the collective arise, inseparably, together, as two aspects of the same mystery. Perspectives all the way down.
The problematic aspect of this is that much of the strife in our world comes from people’s unreflecting identification with their own, inevitably limited, perspective. At a deep, gut level, we often feel threatened when confronted with someone else’s conflicting worldview, and are much more comfortable in the company of “like-minded” people. In my own experience, this clash of opinions can give rise to a physiological fight-or-flight response which I have to wrestle down in order to stay in the conversation...
The ability to take a perspective on one’s perspectives – to see one’s own worldview from outside – is an indication that an individual has reached a certain stage in the development of consciousness. When what we were once unconsciously subject to arises as an object inside our awareness, we can say that we have developed greater depth of consciousness. It is abundantly clear that the majority of the world’s adult population has not yet reached that stage and that, if our species is to survive past its adolescence without irreparably fouling its nest, more of us have to get to that point.
There is a proviso here, though. The relativistic position which holds all worldviews as equally valid (so just keep your hands off mine!) is not sustainable in the long term, particularly not as the centre of gravity of a culture. The post-modern deconstructionist passion for dissecting worldviews, reducing them to dark matter and declaring this to be proof that all perspectives are culturally constructed and have no intrinsic value, threatens to leave the most advanced societies bereft of any moral context larger than the individual ego and its drive for instant gratification.
So then, the fact of taking a perspective on this perspective about worldviews is indicative of yet further development. Another layer of depth has been introduced into the structure of our consciousness. And it is this notion of depth that leads the integral thinker to believe that all worldviews are not equal, that they can be ranked.
Questions that we like to ask are: What is the value in this worldview? In what way does this worldview uplift the person who subscribes to it? In what way does this worldview contribute to the evolution of our species? These are practical questions which can benefit us in the immediate, practical world that we live in.
The worldviews presented here on Polilogues all offer a depth which we feel meets this criterion of upliftment. They come from an astonishingly broad array of perspectives, and this is another delight of the integral approach: biology isn’t better than chemistry, which isn’t better than physics or mysticism. They all are. And a worldview which cannot accommodate what is will not get us very far.
Integral Education in Sweden
- Can you talk about the need in the world for your life’s work?
video (5,8mb) | transcript
- How can we create an environment that children are motivated to find meaning and purpose with their lives?
video (6,8mb) | transcript
- Can you tell us something more about your approach? (part A)
video (5,7mb) | transcript
- Can you tell us something more about your approach? (part B)
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Making Meaning
۞ Gerard Bodifée talks about humans as meaning making beings.
- Do we as human beings find meaning in the cosmos by taking a religious approach to it?
video (9,9mb) | transcript
- The Now is eternal. Is that right?
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- Science often denies that the Kosmos has brought us forth as meaning-making beings. The fact that we are able to do this emerges from the very cosmos that they are studying. Is that right?
video (5,7mb) | transcript
Evolution
- Do we jump to the next evolutionary level by means of increased communication of the individuals at that level?
video (9,5mb) | transcript
- Do we find an individual and a social aspect in evolution?
video (7,5mb) | transcript
The Practical Path
۞ Gerard Bodifée talks about some of the practical paths we can take towards a Full Existence.
- Do you think there is a practical path to this Full Existence?
video (5,1mb) | transcript
- Should we take practical steps towards integrating science and religion?
video (7,5mb) | transcript
The One and the Many
- The Minkowski Space
video (9,0mb) | transcript
- Imaginary time
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- Dark Matter revisited
video (6,5mb) | transcript
- The One divided
video (6,5mb) | transcript
Religare et Integrare
What are some of the real problems that religions today are facing? In my personal opinion - just a musing - the problems stem from a failure to integrate at at least two levels. Positively stated, there are two tasks to perform for any religion:
- within one tradition to integrate the truth, beauty and goodness of the premodern, modern, and post-modern periods;
- to free up the possibility of a trans-path spirituality that incorporates the ’best practices’ and core insights of any tradition;
A nice example of the second movement is Integral Spiritual Center.
Integral Philosophy
One of the aims of this project and website is to be a possible example of an integral philosophy in practice. In this post I would like to make clear what is involved in integral philosophy. And I would like to do this by explicating the view on philosophy of Belgian philosopher Leo Apostel, and comparing it to the ideas of Ken Wilber who is generally considered to be the integral philosopher par excellence.
Leo Apostel (as narrated by Wim Christiaens) believes philosophy should aim at incorporating particular perspectives in a more global perspective, and as an applied skill, it should aim at guiding people and organisations in their search for happiness and self-fulfillment. In order to achieve these principles Apostel sets himself three goals.
First, to unify different perspectives without maiming them. This is similar to Ken Wilber’s ’transcend and include’ where the different perspectives are included but transcended in a bigger whole. Wilber looks for the particular truths of each tradition or system and ties it in with other fields of knowledge while vigorously opposing the imperialist tendencies of any tradition who thinks it alone holds the whole truth.
Second, to work towards personal salvation and inner peace. We see something similar in Ken Wilber’s thinking when he stresses the fact that we should first and foremost take up an integral transformative or life practice (ref. ILP), in particular including physical practices, psychodynamic shadow work, and a spiritual discipline, amongst others..
Third, to strive towards social redemption of humanity by arguing for a social organisation that offers us a maximum of pluralism with a maximum of unity (or freedom and equality). Again, in a similar way Wilber has made ample theoretical effort to defend the so-called integral society that honors and respects the whole spiral of social development, and each and every stage of it.
Psychotherapy and Buddhism
۞ Han de Wit discussed the relationship between psychotherapy and taking a spiritual path such as Buddhism.
- Are there any theoretical similarities between your work in Contemplative Psychology and the work of Ken Wilber?
video (8,1mb) | transcript
- (continued)
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- Is there a relationship between psychotherapy and the path of meditation?
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- (continued)
video (4,8mb) | transcript
- Should we do psychotherapy before we start meditating?
video (8,5mb) | transcript
- Can you be neurotically enlightened as well?
video (6,7mb) | transcript
Integral Thinkers
Why Matter Matters
۞ In these fragments Fons Wils talks about the distribution of matter in the universe, the problems with the Big Bang as a theory, and the possibility of an alternative theory for the Big Bang.
- Why does matter matter?
video (7,6mb) | transcript
- Is the Big Bang fact or hypothesis?
video (8,2mb) | transcript
- And can we find an alternative?
video (8,3mb) | transcript
The Fullness of Being
۞ Gerard Bodifée points to the Greatness and Smallness of our human existence in this interview.
- Is the Fullness of Being a triangulation of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful?
video (9,9mb) | transcript
- Could we say that we are halfway between the Beasts and the Gods?
video (4,9mb) | transcript
Gender and Spirituality
۞ We had a talk with Veerle Fraeters (Belgium) about Gender and Spirituality. In this interview Fraeters focused on 12th and 13th century women’s visionary mysticism, and in particular on Hadewijch of Brabant. In the first fragment you will also hear Fraeters sing from the Songs of Hadewijch.
- What was the setting for female mysticism in the 12th and 13th century in the Low Countries?
video (6,8mb) | transcript
- (continued)
video (5,9mb) | transcript
- Can you tell us something about the type of spirituality these women practised?
video (9,3mb) | transcript
Nutterts on Psycho-Spiritual Work
۞ Douwe Nutterts talks with us some more about psycho-spiritual work, his influences from humanistic psychology, his use of meditation, etc.
- You are also influenced by humanistic psychology and the human potential movement, is that right?
video (10,7mb) | transcript
- Did teaching help you to go beyond book knowledge?
video (5,07mb) | transcript
- Do you have many colleagues within this field?
video (10,7mb) | transcript
- Can Psycho-Spiritual Work contribute to the Interfaith Dialogue?
video (9,8mb) | transcript