Greetings and Felicitations,

Religion is that human thought process that makes one a slave to another. Every religion tells us that we must submit our will to that of some divine force. How are we supposed to know what that divine force wants us to do? Some religious follower, who supposedly has more authentic experiences than you, will let you know what god wants you to do. Just listen to what they tell you, give them as much money as you have, and they will let you know what god wants.

Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

__________________

In my previous post I presented an example of Wilber's stages of self-sense correlating them with his -- basic cognitive structure -- his stages of worldview -- and major epochs development. As I said, stages of development should not be viewed as a simplistic ladder, but as fluid waves that overlap. Here I shall make some clarifications regarding how stages of development affect spiritual or religious expressions and experience. I must also remind everyone that this is an incomplete presentation of Wilber's developmental model (usually he presents 10 stages, but several times he has given several more).

Here is the example I gave:

pre-conventional/pre-rational
1. material self -- sensation/perception -- archaic -- foraging age
2. body-ego -- impulse/emotional -- magical -- horticultural age
conventional/rational (though the rational aspect only begins during the mature persona stage)
3. persona -- role-rule/concept -- mythic -- agrarian age
4. ego -- formal logic -- rational -- industrial age
post-conventional/post-rational or trans-rational (this phase actually begins during the mature ego stage)
5. centaur -- vision logic -- holistic/integration -- information age
6. soul -- archetypal -- psychic/subtle -- (there are no cultures currently at or above this level of development)
7. spirit -- formless -- causal/nondual -- (same as above)

Because of the linear nature of this 2-dimensional presentation it appears that for a person to actually have a real "religious" experience one must develop through all of the stages up to the soul level. This is not the case. In my presentation above I collapsed four stages of religious/spiritual unfolding into my stages 6 and 7. Wilber usually presents these higher stages as the: psychic, subtle, causal, and nondual. These are correlated with the types of mystical experience one could have as they progress religiously/spiritually.

psychic -- nature mysticism
subtle -- deity mysticism
causal -- formless mysticism
nondual -- nondual mysticism (this stage/level is technically both the last stage and the ground of all stages of development)

Within the great religious traditions the stages of psychic, subtle, and causal are also correlated with the three common states of consciousness -- waking/psychic, dreaming/subtle, and deep sleep/causal. Remember, nondual is considered by nearly all mystical traditions as the ground of all stages and all states.

Everyone has access to waking, dreaming, and deep sleep states and through those we have access to psychic, subtle, and causal level experiencing/insight. Since the nondual is considered the ground of all states (and stages) we always have access to nondual level experiences. Here is where it gets a little interesting.

With everyone having access to these levels of experiencing/insight why do they appear in such diverse forms? Because whatever you experience (religious or mundane) you interpret that experience from the level of development you have attained. Of course, that interpretation is also co-created from within one's culture. A Buddhist from Tibet does not have a religious experience of a divine being transcending suffering on a cross, just as a Christian does not have a religious experience of a divine being radiating compassion with four or a thousands arms.

If you have a religious/spiritual experience (say of the subtle level), but have only developed up to the self sense of the persona -- with the cognitive structure of role-rule/concept -- and the worldview of the mythic stage, it will appear like Moses on Mount Sinai. Moses takes that experience (of light and sound) and translates it downward into his persona and role (leader of the Jewish people) and presents the literal rules of God to "the chosen" people. While some may criticize the ethnocentric bent of Moses message, it was a higher level spiritual insight to the nature worship (the Golden Calf) that the people were engaging in when he descended from the Mount Sinai. I would claim that Mohammad's revelation was of a similar type with the differences of expression being due to cultural differences.

Another example, very common today, is to have religious/spiritual experience of the psychic level when one has developed up to the self sense of the centaur -- with the cognitive structure of vision logic -- and the worldview of holistic/integration. Here in America this could be interpreted as a profound sense of the Oneness of all existence, all life. Here there is no ethnocentric bent nor any speciesism. All peoples and all creatures are enfolded within the grace of the divine or the sacred and the sacred/divine shines upon all of nature. Oh, an atheists can have this kind of experience just as someone with a more theistic orientation.

One last example, not so pretty. Another subtle level religious/experience, but this time the person has only developed up to a self sense of body-ego -- with a cognitive structure impulse/emotional -- and a magical worldview. Without a fully formed ego, not even the seed of ego the persona, this individual will interpret this subtle level experience in a pre-egotic form. They will likely view this experience as a personal message from God (or Goddess or the Big Head) that only they alone have had and hold. Rather than a "chosen people" like Moses, he is the "Chosen One." And since this person's cognitive structure is impulse/emotion their impulses and emotions will be perceived as the impulses and emotions of the Big Head. If he is angry, God is angry. Being impulsive their emotional states can/will change like lighting. Love is love and total, anger is wrath and total. With a magical worldview, which has difficulties differentiating object-subject relationships, they are unable to take the perspectives of others. Someone with this kind of psycho-dynamic complex can identify with a mythic level belief system and make it their own. When that happens we get Jamestown, Waco, and the Bin Ladens of the world.

tashi deleks,

M

__________________
"They haven't got Brains, any of them, only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and they don't Think." -- Eeyore, The House At Pooh Corner

Sit like a mountain,
Breathe like the wind,
Mind like the Sky.

When all the Gods are crazy, who do you pray to?

In my most recent post I presented the theory that spiritual/religious experiences are always translated or interpreted from the level of development one has attained. One of the reasons I presented this has to do with several of the comments by posters to this thread. Many have expressed a very negative view of religion (which is really only spirit from a collective perspective) -- seeing it as an example of the worst of human engagements. Yet, what religion are they actually condemning -- archaic religion, magic religion, mythic religion, rational religion, holistic/integrative religion, psychic religion, subtle religion, causal religion, or nondual religion? (Yes, I know I just listed nine levels, technically I could list as many as 16, if not more, but I don't want to get carried away).

Perhaps some of the statements by these individuals will help us see from where they are coming from and what they are pointing toward.

Noahath: voted for "non rational engagement" because, "We now read the Greek myths and enjoy the stories as just that: stories. We don't seriously believe in the idea of Zeus, Hear, et al."

Straight Talk: voted for "non rational engagement, a meaningful integrative engagement, a wishful, defensive compensatory belief created to assuage fears and anxiety, an exoteric engagement that serves a cultural/social function, and a legitimizing practice that helps a person to integrate a certain worldview." -- "ALL religions are dogmatic, because they all present 'absolute truth.' Of course you could formulate a religion or a moral code that is relatively very good for society. However, the supreme majority of religions on earth do not do this. Certainly the judeo-christian trio with dominates western society does not."

John Drake: did not vote, but presented us with an excerpt of Twain's wonderfully thought provoking book Letters from Earth and stated that, "Religion is like conservatism only worse, WHY would any body be religious?"

CDavid Neely: voted for "nonrational engagement, a wishful, defensive compensatory belief created to assuage fears and anxiety, and is fixation/regression." stated that -- Religion is that human thought process that makes one a slave to another. Every religion tells us that we must submit our will to that of some divine force. How are we supposed to know what that divine force wants us to do? Some religious follower, who supposedly has more authentic experiences than you, will let you know what god wants you to do. Just listen to what they tell you, give them as much money as you have, and they will let you know what god wants.

I would say that each of these comments are correct if they are pointing toward archaic religion, magic religion, and mythic religion, but are not correct if they are including rational religion, holistic/integrative religion, psychic religion, subtle religion, causal religion, or nondual religion. I would also say that from their writings (and others unnamed) on this thread and "how" they have written on other topics on other threads, each are coming from, at the very least, a rational level of development. For a couple it is obvious to me that they are writing from a centauric -- vision logic level of development.

Now let me go off on a little tangent. One of the insights of developmental psychology is everyone is born at stage 1. Even though the many different researchers of development have focused their own research on their own particular interests (cognitive, self-sense, morals, needs, modes of space and time, logico-mathematical competence, worldview, values, kinesthetic skills, and etc.), each has concluded that regardless of the natural talents of each individual everyone begins at stage 1 and must "grow through" each stage. There is no skipping over stages of development. Unlike states of consciousness, which everyone has the potential of experiencing at any time, you are only able to experience from the level of development you have attained. Their are "peek" experiences of states, but not "peeking" experiences of stages.

[It may confuse some that I had placed soul and spirit as higher stages of development (stages 6 and 7) with what I just wrote. The reason I had placed them as higher stages is to indicate that for those who take up a practice, such as meditation or contemplative prayer, with work and effort their minds would structurally adapt to those levels of being. Several empirical studies have shown that the brain/mind's plasticity indicates that meditation actually structurally changes the brain and the writings of mystics that these changes correlate to deep felt experiences that change the mind. One must be careful not to reduce one to the other.]

The reason there is no skipping within development has to do with the fact that certain capacities are required for higher development. You cannot engage in formal logic until you have developed the capacity to apply "rules" in simple settings. The capacity to apply "rules" and to take on "roles" within society (and within oneself) is developed at the level of the persona -- role-rule/concept -- mythic worldview. Once one has developed a basic competency at that level one then can develop (hopefully) a healthy ego -- apply formal logical operations -- within a rational worldview. And those capacities developed during those lower levels (that is as long as development is healthy) are not discarded, they are integrated. For a person to develop a healthy ego to live within a healthy rational worldview, they must have developed a healthy persona within a mythic worldview. That mythic worldview was not just the dominate worldview three thousand years ago, it is also the dominate worldview of your average 7 or 8 year old.

So I ask again, what religion are they actually condemning?

More later.

tashi deleks,

M

__________________
"They haven't got Brains, any of them, only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and they don't Think." -- Eeyore, The House At Pooh Corner

Sit like a mountain,
Breathe like the wind,
Mind like the Sky.

When all the Gods are crazy, who do you pray to?

Greetings and Felicitations,

I am condemning them all.

If I understand your comments the reason I take my view of religion is that I simply haven't evolved enough in my psychological development. I may have misunderstood all the psycho-babble but is what I see in your writing.

The fact that you like Ken Wilber explains it all. Typical new age nonsense.

I counter your Ken Wilber with
Skeptic: Home: The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine
Welcome to the Humanist Contemplative Club

Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

__________________

Then you are making a grave error, for a host of reasons. Throwing out the spiritual baby, with the mythic bath water. More on that in a later post. This error is a common one shared by many materialists and needs a separate post of its own. I will do my best to keep the psycho-babble to a minimum.

No, that is not what I am saying. Your view of "archaic religion, magic religion, and mythic religion" are spot on. That you collapse what I am calling "rational religion, holistic/integrative religion, psychic religion, subtle religion, causal religion, and nondual religion" downward into those pre-rational engagements is where you are in error and has more to do with the subtle reductionism of materialism than your own level of development. In may ways, the fact that you can make this kind of error is an indication that you have attained a very high level of cognitive development. It is part of the downside of modernity. But again, more on that later.

CDavid quotes from a review of Wilber's A Theory of Everything -- Hmm ... what would you say about a review of Shakespeare's Hamlet which claimed that it was an action adventure thriller or a review of Moby Dick claiming that it was a story about a fishing trip? Why would I say that? Just from what you quoted your review claims that Wilber likes "to toss around words like soul, spirit, and spirituality without explaining what he is talking about." That is completely false.

One of Wilber's criticism of many of the writers of or about religion and spirituality is that they do not define the terms religion and spirituality. As I said above, the nine poll definitions of religion above are paraphrasing Wilber's definitions of religion from Wilber's book A Sociable God. From the introduction to the 2005 edition of the book: "... there are at least a dozen different meanings of 'religious' or 'spirituality,' and we need to take these differences into account if our discussions of those topics are to make any sense at all. Most conversations about religion and spirituality proceed as if those words were transparent, whereas they are anything but. At the very least, there is a profound difference between a spirituality that helps one translate and a spirituality that helps one transform. Some types of religion obfuscate, some oppress, some liberate. At any given moment, which function of religion are we discussing?" (page 1). This is not the only place he mentions how important it is to explain what one means when using these terms.

In his book Integral Psychology on page 129 he states clearly the importance of defining terms like "spirituality." "There are at least five very different definitions, [of spirituality] ... All of them appear to be legitimate uses of the word 'spirituality,' but it is absolutely necessary to specify which you mean." He then presents what he believes are the five most common definitions of "spirituality," ones that he believes need to be included for an integral model.
1. Spirituality involves the highest levels of any developmental line.
2. Spirituality is the sum total of the highest levels of the developmental lines.
3. Spirituality is itself a separate developmental line.
4. Spirituality is an attitude (such as openness or love) that you can have at whatever stage you are at.
5. Spirituality basically involves peak experiences, not stages.

He then goes on for 6 pages expanding and explaining those definitions.

It appears that in contradiction to your reviewer, Wilber is not the kind of person who likes to "to toss around words like soul, spirit, and spirituality without explaining what he is talking about." This is not the only place where your little reviewer gets Wilber wrong. His implied assertion that Wilber presents no evidence (the review says, "skeptics of those presenting claims without evidence") to support his claims is also false. Unfortunately many materialists due to the gross and subtle reductionism they push upon reality refuse to accept any evidence that does not fit within their worldview (but again more on that later in another post).

Hardly.

I think it is interesting that you claim to "condemning them all" (archaic religion, magic religion, mythic religion, rational religion, holistic/integrative religion, psychic religion, subtle religion, causal religion, or nondual religion) and yet present a website that is a fine example of either a rational religion or a holistic/integrative religion.

I am one of those people who prefer to go to the source rather than read second hand interpretations of the works of others. Those who are really interested in reading about the theories of Ken Wilber, but don't want to buy any of his books, I would recommend going here: Ken Wilber: Welcome
Start with: Ken Wilber Online: Waves, Streams, States, and Self--A Summary of My Psychological Model
And then for something a bit different which also gets into his view of what happened on 9/11 go here: Ken Wilber Online: A Summary of Integral Psychology

that's it for now and tashi deleks,

M

__________________
"They haven't got Brains, any of them, only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and they don't Think." -- Eeyore, The House At Pooh Corner

Sit like a mountain,
Breathe like the wind,
Mind like the Sky.

When all the Gods are crazy, who do you pray to?

My definition:

Religion is a human created ideology intended to divide the common people and allow the consolidation of power among the elite. It manifests hate and intolerance and is responsible for the more deaths throughout human history than war and cancer combined. The largely interpretational practice of religion allows for extremely contradictory philosophies which only certify its hypocrisy. The most commonly used defense when faced with losing a rational argument is to invoke (insert one of the many religious instruction manuals here) as a means to justify a blatantly lost position. Religion is the achilles heel of humanity which eventually and ultimately lead to our destruction (if we are lucky) or our enslavement.

I present my own understanding of why religion and science have been engaged in an almost 300 year old war and comment on many of the assertions of several who have posted on this thread here:

Sorry this took so long and I am very sorry this relpy is so long.

tashi deleks,

M

__________________
"They haven't got Brains, any of them, only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and they don't Think." -- Eeyore, The House At Pooh Corner

Sit like a mountain,
Breathe like the wind,
Mind like the Sky.

When all the Gods are crazy, who do you pray to?

In the religion idea can be separate three aspects:
1. Religiousness this is (Leo Tolstoy) necessary quality of socially loyal person to be self limiting in his(her) wishing and acting. It is the same as moral. Thus, this quality can be belong to an atheist.
2. Believing in God. This aspect gives a human a sense of its existence, and fear of punishing for the breaking of the moral norms.
3. Church is an ideological organization, which has a useful social function but often follows to its mercantile interests.
Historically, aims of Cabala (Avraam) , Moses, Christ, Utopians and First Communists were the same.

Hello Mark,

It appears that you believe that the main function of religion is social rather than personal. That its purpose is to hold or constrain individuals to and within the group. While I agree that is an aspect of religion I would say it is only its translative aspect and has little to do with its transformative quality. What I mean by translative aspect is: the capacity to hold and unite individuals at a specific worldview. This has obvious benefits socially. What I mean by transformative quality is: the capacity to allow for and encourage and open an individual to higher levels of development and being.

Hmm ... while I would agree that an atheist can be just as moral as a religious person, I would not agree that an atheist has a "religiousness" about them living a moral life. Again, you are referring to the more social functions of religion.

This is a very Judeo-Christian perspective of religion and God. I have heard 'born-again' Christians assert that you are not really religious without a belief in God. I disagree. So do many Buddhist and Taoist (Daoist). Also, while a sense of one's existence can be expressed through a belief in God, that does not necessarily go with a fear of punishment for breaking moral (social) norms. For many believers in God, their sense of existence is linked to a forgiving healing loving God, not a punishing God.

In many cases this is true, but the same could be said of any human (social) organization. It is also the case that within those "ideological organizations" there are small groups which are dedicated to a transformative life, or a life of contemplation. Those groups are not so ideological about their dogma, and consider their main aim to encourage the growth and spiritual development of their members. The mythologists Joseph Campbell noted when he was at an inter-faith conference in Japan that while the priest of the different traditions would argue over dogma and doctrine, the monks of the different traditions would compare notes on practice. Priests and monks (or nuns) serve different functions within traditions.

This is a claim made by some neo-communists and while there are similarities between these individuals and groups, their aims are not the same. The "aim" of Christ (or Moses) was not the same aim of the "First Communists." Particularly if you mean by "First Communists" Marx and Engles.

tashi deleks,

M

__________________
"They haven't got Brains, any of them, only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and they don't Think." -- Eeyore, The House At Pooh Corner

Sit like a mountain,
Breathe like the wind,
Mind like the Sky.

When all the Gods are crazy, who do you pray to?

Now that's an interesting and original definition.

Untrue. I'll take it that you want to talk exclusively about religions for which it is true.

There are varying answers to this question.

That's one of them.

I would have to agree with your skepticism towards and disgust with a religion which fits this rather narrow conception -- advocating submission to a divine force/will, and posing a human agency as the medium between them. Certainly such religions exist, and have all too many followers.

When you are able to see the obvious irrationality of assuming that this conception describes all varieties of spirituality, perhaps we can talk more. And no, I don't care to present you with a counterexample, although that would be easy to do, because the idea is so preposterous that if you can't see how wrong it is, then your normally splendid rational ability is clearly short-circuited in this case. I will need you to overcome that yourself before any further discussion will be worth pursuing.

I don't bother arguing evolution with creationists, either.

Greetings and Felicitations,

I don't know of any religion that doesn't require the submission of the individual to some exterior force. That force may be a god, gods, goddesses, incorporeal realm or another person. In my search for a religion I failed to find one that did not.

The thread didn't ask you to define spirituality. It asked you to define religion. The common assumption is that they are both the same. However, they are not. It is entirely possible to hold the highest spiritual values and not practice any religion.

I tend to respect your opinions on most things but this sounds a little sloppy. If you can present a counterexample I would be most happy to see it. I'm always seeking input on these issues.

Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

__________________

Well, that in itself is a partial definition of religion, one that I don't find particularly useful.

I suppose since I haven't participated in this thread before, I should present my own. Religion is an embodiment in thought, words, art, and ritual practice of the spiritual impulse. As the spiritual impulse touches upon a reality that cannot be expressed except in metaphor, all religious thought, words, and art are metaphorical in nature. (As is ritual, but this occasions less confusion.)

It is impossible to hold spiritual values of any sort without practicing a religion by this definition, since our nature as partial and limited subjective viewpoints upon the cosmos requires that we embody the spiritual impulse in thoughts, words, art, and ritual practice of some kind, and not just experience it "purely." Of course, it does not require that we practice any of the so-called "great" religions, and it certainly doesn't require that we practice a religion by your own definition.

David, I usually respect your opinions as well, but in fact there are many religions that do not require submission to an "exterior" force. Some conceive of spiritual realities as interior rather than exterior. Some equate both them and the individual with the cosmos as a whole entity. Some do not call for submission, but rather for merging and identification. This is actually quite obvious and doesn't take a very in-depth study of comparative religion to see it.

In fact, there are even branches of Islam that don't fit this description, and the very name Islam means "submission." Perhaps you have heard of the Sufis? Sufis usually believe that Allah is all-that-is, which of course is heretical by most orthodox Muslim versions, but nonetheless it's the way they look at things. I've seen a Sufi interpretation of the central tenet of the Muslim faith (there is no God but God) as implying that there is only one entity in the world and it is Allah. Since this implies an identity between the self and God, it isn't a call for submission to some external force, and certainly it's not a call for obedience to some human intermediary, since this is something one must come to understand for oneself through personal transformation, and no other person's words suffice to convey understanding.

Of course there is a lot of ignorance and stupidity associated with religions, and what you described is a common form. But I don't even think it's a good description of the root of religious error, let alone of religion itself. It seems to me that all religious error can be traced to two sources. One of those is the fact that, as I said, it's impossible for thought, words, or art to express spiritual reality except in metaphor. If one does not have a certain degree of enlightenment, one is likely to take metaphor for literal statement. That happens a lot. The other source is politics, because religion has been a source of political power at least since the dawn of civilization if not longer. That was especially true when religion and government were intertwined, but to a lesser degree it's still true today, and this distorts religious belief inevitably. Now that latter root of error lends itself very well to the sort of thing you described, with a call for submission to a divine authority via its human spokespersons (living or dead), but, although this is certainly fairly common (and I agree it's deplorable), it's hardly universal.

As I said, it really is quite obvious that not all religions follow the pattern you described. But I have found that a lot of atheists (particularly the subset who make a big deal about it) are motivated by a completely justifiable anger at the religion of their upbringing and/or greatest familiarity, and this colors all of their thinking and introduces a degree of irrationality. I find it very difficult to hold a rational discussion with people like that, on that subject. I participated briefly on an atheist discussion board, where there were a fair number of "people of faith" participating, but all of them were conventional theists with a literal belief in an external God. (Usually Christian. As I remember it, actually all of them Christian, but I may not be remembering that completely correctly.) My own views were simply not welcome, because the dialog that was wanted was between atheists and conventional believers, and my own views, which fall outside the easy categories, gave them cognitive dissonance. And besides, I was prone to argue with everyone there and agree with nobody.

But back to the embodiment thing again, the need for a metaphorical cloak of thought, word, art, and ritual, I can talk a bit about my own religious practice. I'm a Neopagan, practicing a self-created form of Wicca. I worship -- but don't literally believe in -- a God and a Goddess, each of which takes various forms. I can talk to my deities, feel their presence, employ their help in my magical art, receive advice from them, and connect to the All through them, but I recognize that their reality is partly of my own creation: the power of my imagination and thought in communion with the Universe, generating intermediate realities that wouldn't exist independent of myself. Yet I know my own limits, and realize that I'm not quite "cosmic" enough to dispense with such metaphorical tools. And I believe that the same model describes the deities of other religions as well, insofar as people actually connect with them and are not merely mouthing words by rote.

And this kind of thing is both useful and (in some form) necessary. The problem arises when we mistake metaphor for literal statement.

I could actually go into a lot more about what I mean by "the cosmos," and why the universe as a whole is immune to rational understanding (in a nutshell, scientific method depends on observation, which depends upon separating a part of the universe from another part so as to provide a viewpoint for observation; the cosmos in toto cannot be observed because there is no room outside it for any observer to stand). And similarly how consciousness itself is immune to rational understanding or observation, and the connection between the two, which I regard as one. But that would be getting pretty heavy. Suffice it to say that I don't have a lot of respect for simplistic approaches to this business, whether they be religious or atheistic.