Evolution, Enlightenment and American Philosophy a blog by Jeff Carreira

Entries tagged as ‘Ken Wilber’

Evolution and Andrew Cohen

February 2, 2010 · 24 Comments

Evolutionary Enlightenment is the spiritual teaching that has been developed by Andrew Cohen over more than two decades. That teaching has grown to include an evolutionary cosmology that very closely resembles that held collectively by the American Pragmatists, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey. Did Andrew Cohen get his evolutionary view from these great thinkers? Not directly.

Cohen, similar to Peirce, describes the evolution of the universe as beginning from a state of pure emptiness, perfect potentiality prior to manifestation. He goes on to outline a possibility for personal and cultural conscious evolution that is in many ways reminiscent of Peirce, James and Dewey. Cohen wasn’t aware of the work of Peirce or Dewey during the majority of the time that he was outlining and teaching Evolutionary Enlightenment. He was familiar with William James’ work on religious experience, but I don’t believe that Cohen’s evolutionary cosmology would have come from James, although reading James might have helped predispose him to such a perspective.

Cohen’s teaching has had some overt evolutionary perspective from the very start of his teaching career. “Self-realization is evolution” was a statement that he made in some of his earliest writing. One of Cohen’s early influences that did bring an evolutionary perspective to him was the Indian Spiritual Master, Gopi Krishna. Gopi Krishna was  a Hindu teacher who taught the awakening of inner human energies known as Kundalini. Gopi Krishna’s teaching was unconventional in that he taught Kundalini in an evolutionary context and claimed that these energies were the energy of evolution. As a young seeker Andrew Cohen was very inspired by Gopi Krishna and his evolutionary view.

Gopi Krishna certainly planted an evolutionary seed in Andrew Cohen’s mind, and yet it is unlikely that he was the source of what was to become a cosmologically based evolutionary spirituality. The influences that brought that out in Andrew Cohen’s Evolutionary Enlightenment came later in his teaching career in the form of three American teachers that all had a strong evolutionary perspective.

The first of these teachers was Michael Murphy. Murphy had been a disciple of the Indian sage Sri Aurobindo and his spiritual successor, The Mother. Aurobindo and the Mother taught in India and developed a profound Evolutionary Spirituality that is one of the most important precursors to the Evolutionary Spirituality that is growing in popularity today. Michael Murphy brought this evolutionary perspective back with him to the United States and, as one of the most prominent figures in the human potential movement, co-founded Esalen a Spiritual center in California known for its blend of Eastern and Western practices.

Another of Andrew Cohen’s evolutionary influences was cosmologist Brian Swimme. Swimme’s view of cosmic evolution was very influenced by the writings of Catholic Priest and Paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin. De Chardin, like Sri Aurobindo and The Mother,  is one of the most significant early pioneers of Evolutionary Spirituality. He is perhaps best known for his use of the phrase “Noosphere” to describe the thinking layer of the Earth.  His description of the evolution of the cosmos towards some final “Omega Point” is a breathtaking vision of spiritual cosmic evolution.

The last, and perhaps most important, evolutionary influence on Andrew Cohen was his close association with Ken Wilber. It is with Ken Wilber that some connection to the evolutionary perspective of the American Pragmatists can be seen. Wilber was influenced in his work to some degree by all three of the founding Pragmatists, although he praises Charles Sanders Peirce most strongly. The evolutionary philosophy that Andrew Cohen created as part of his teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment reflects many of the evolutionary ideas of Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, and these ideas in turn reflect many of the ideas of the early Pragmatists.

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The Birth of Integral Theory

January 29, 2010 · 8 Comments

In this blog I have attempted to create a snapshot of the American philosophy of Pragmatism. In doing this I have emphasized how ideas are developed as part of, and in response to, larger cultural currents. Pragmatism emerged and developed during the height of what is known as the modern era which began with the European Enlightenment and grew to become the uncontested champion worldview in western thought until the midpoint of the twentieth century. The economic, political and moral failures of two world wars, a great depression and then the lingering cold war, were seen as the failures of the overly progressive modernist spirit.

The disillusionment from these events accelerated the already growing introspective mood of 20th Century America. In the Beatniks of the 1950’s became the Hippies of the 1960’s and a popular infusion of Eastern Spiritual teachings and practices swept through the counter culture. Simultaneously interest in psychology, particularly the psychoanalytic methods pioneered by Sigmund Freud, was growing rapidly. This interest in psychological processing led to the growth of a plethora of therapeutic modalities and theories of human development that multiplied through the course of the 1960’s and 1970’s in America.

Any seeker after truth and development during this time found at their disposal a dizzying array of approaches, methods, systems, practices, philosophies and communities – east and west – to choose from. Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Christian Mysticism, Judaism, Psychoanalysis, Psychosynthesis, The Human Potential Movement, Meditation, Martial Arts and so on. With so many different paths to human development popularly available it was probably inevitably that someone would come along and try to sort them all out.

One young American was confused by all of the diversity represented in these human development systems and wanted to learn how to effectively compare such seemingly different systems based on such a wide array of different philosophical and intellectual principles. His name was, Ken Wilber, and his answer to the puzzle of how these different methods of development were related was his first book, “The Spectrum of Consciousness.”

The fundamental thesis of that book is simple and elegant and arguably not entirely original, but it was described with an elegance and breadth of scope that made it enormously compelling. Wilber was describing a theory that recognized that consciousness had different aspects, different functions, and that these aspects or functions could be seen as existing as part of a continuum that he was calling “the spectrum of consciousness.”

The different psychological methods and spiritual practices that had become so popular in the two decades since the midpoint of the century were all aimed at the development of consciousness, but they were not all aimed at the same aspect or function of consciousness. In Wilber’s book he describes in detail how the different aspects of consciousness lie within a spectrum that has an inherently hierarchal structure. Some aspects of consciousness are higher than others. He then proceeded to match different psychological approaches, spiritual practices and systems of human development with the aspects of consciousness that they address.

This book captured the attention of many people and sparked what became called the “Transpersonal Revolution” and what Wilber would eventually develop into his conception of Integral Theory. As his theory grew he would eventually describe the universe as a single evolving continuum. Aspects of his theory closely resemble and were in part inspired by, the thinking of the American Pragmatists.

The firstness, secondness, and thirdness of Charles Sanders Peirce in particular bear a striking resemblance to Wilber’s conception that reality can be mapped into four quadrants. Like Peirce, Wilber starts with the three perspectives represented by the first, second and third person points of view. In Wilber’s construction, however, reality is divided in half twice. For those who might not be familiar with these quadrants I will attempt the simplest possible explanation. The first time reality is vertically split into the inner dimension of existence and the outer dimension of existence – what I see inside myself and what I see outside myself. These halves are again split into individual and collective aspects. So the inner dimension is split into what I see in me, and what we share together in the form of inner ideas and values. The outer dimension is split into an external view of me or another and an external view of the world that we exist within.

And so Wilber in an attempt to understand the diverse forms developmental approaches that emerged after the fall of Pragmatism gave birth to Integral Theory.

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Evolutionary Enlightenment and American Philosophy

October 26, 2009 · 1 Comment

Before continuing with our fascinating discussion I wanted, in the interest of transparency, to tell a little more about my interest in American Philosophy.

The last decades of the 20th century saw a resurgence of interest in progressive and evolution thinking in both academic as well as popular philosophy. The author Louis Menand in his Pulitzer Prize winning book The Metaphysical Club attributes this resurgence of progressive, forward-looking thought to the ending of the cold war and links it back to the classic American philosophy of . Today this line of thinking can be found in the increasingly popular literature of Evolutionary Spirituality. Some of the most prominent contemporary proponents of this philosophy are the recently deceased Pragmatismbut enormously influential Fr. Thomas Berry, the cosmologist Brian Swimme, the futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard, the author Ken Wilber and my own spiritual mentor Andrew Cohen.

I first encountered Andrew Cohen in November of 1992 when I saw him speak in Cambridge,Massachusetts. At the time he was teaching a somewhat westernized version of an Eastern Enlightenment tradition called Advaita Vedanta. I left his talk intrigued, but honestly feeling that I had not understood anything of what he was saying. I was inspired enough, however, to pick up a copy of his book Enlightenment is Secret and my imagination was soon captivated by the message that I was reading in it. As I understood it, Cohen’s message was devastatingly simple and profound; if you truly want to be free there is nothing in this world that can stop you! What Cohen was pointing to was the deep sense that most of us have of being victimized by the experience of life. We feel burdened by our emotional and psychological experience and often see our ability to make choices as being severely limited by circumstances, social roles and responsibilities, and our personal inadequacies. This sense of limitation, according to Cohen, was an illusion. It was, in fact, a stance, a position that we were freely choosing to adopt in relationship to the complexity of human life. And because it was a position that we were choosing to take, we could just as easily stop choosing it. That was the mysterious key to liberating the human spirit. I didn’t know it at the time, but this notion revolved around one of the central themes that had developed through the history of American Philosophy; the question of freewill and creative potential.

After reading and rereading Cohen’s book I finally had the chance to see him speak again. This time I was determined to walk away with at least some understanding of what he was saying so I resolved to ask him a question about what I was thinking. “I believe what you are writing and speaking about is true.” I stated, “But, where do I find the faith to follow that path and know that everything is going to turn out OK?” I asked. His answer was as devastating simple and direct as his teaching. “Who says everything is going to turn out OK?” he questioned in response and then continued. “If you knew that everything was going to turn out OK you wouldn’t need any faith.” He went on to speak about the nature of risk and human life, but I had already gotten the answer to my question and although it wasn’t necessarily the answer that I had wanted it was the answer that I was looking for. Again, I had no way of knowing it, but my question about faith and Cohen’s implied instance that human life was a risk was also a central theme in American Philosophy. It was, in fact, the central question that propelled the entire career of America’s great psychologist philosopher William James.

In the year’s since my early encounter with Andrew Cohen his teaching has grown and developed enormously. What began as a plea for personal liberation became increasingly couched in an evolutionary philosophy that always considered the liberation of the individual in the context of their power to affect the development of our world. Again this line of thought is in many ways the central organizing notion that unifies the great tradition of American Philosophy. Over the past few years I have read and studied some of the historical development of American thought and have been continually strengthened to learn that the teaching that Andrew Cohen calls Evolutionary Enlightenment is very directly connected to the development of philosophy in America.

Two of the main roots of American Philosophy rushed into this nation during the period of colonization from two streams of thinking that had burst into being during the age of reason. One of these came directly from the scientific revolution of the European Enlightenment that was painting a picture of a world governed not by god, but by natural law. At the same time the Protestant Reformation was removing power from a church that it saw as an unnecessary obstacle to and direct access to the divine. These two lines of thought found their way into the American mind where they were shaped by the utopian ideals and challenges of colonization. The American mind began to take shape in the decades during and after the war for independence and finally came into its own during the cultural and spiritual movement led by Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists of Concord. The next generation of thinkers were the first American professional philosophers and they created the greatest original American contribution to world philosophy; Pragmatism.

Pragmatism was an evolutionary philosophy that flourished during the early decades of the 20th century as modernism peaked in American culture. After the great depression and two world wars the progressive spirit of modernisms was called into question by many and Pragmatism and the progressive spirit from which it came was temporarily submerged beneath the post-modernist philosophies  and social movements of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s. The resurgence of interest in Evolutionary Spirituality today is perhaps a second look at the evolutionary thinking at the heart of American philosophy and a chance to recreate Pragmatism in light of the many lessons learned through the 20th Century.

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Evolutionary Spirituality and American Philosophy

August 10, 2009 · Leave a Comment

It is perhaps not surprising that all of the popular contemporary forms of evolutionary spirituality are engaged with the same ethical question that Peirce, James and Dewey attempted to answer. Does the reality of evolution affect the way human beings should live? This question arises naturally with the introduction of an evolutionary worldview that sees the universe as one continuous event, with human beings both growing out of that event and also affecting its further development. Many of those who are so enamored with doctrines of evolutionary spirituality might be surprised to find the ideas they cherish so closely mirrored in the evolutionary metaphysics conceived of by the early Pragmatists a century ago.

For instance, Ken Wilber in his writings describes the evolution of the interior and the exterior of the universe as always occurring simultaneously; where the interior of the universe is consciousness, and the exterior is the physical world of the senses. The universe evolves with the emergence of successive new forms, for example atoms become molecules, which become cells, which become organisms. With every newly emergent external form that arises in the universe Wilber insists that there must be a corresponding new depth of consciousness being plumbed. Wilber reintroduced the Greek spelling of Kosmos, using a “K” in his writings because he felt that the word “Cosmos,” as it was generally used, was limited to only the physical part of the universe, and left out the interior dimension of consciousness. Wilber’s conception of an integrated and unified Kosmos that evolves simultaneously internally and externally is clearly aligned with the work of the early Pragmatists. 19

Another example where this inner and outer continuity resurfaces in contemporary evolutionary spirituality is in Andrew Cohen’s conception of Evolutionary Enlightenment. Cohen initially upheld the unity of inner and outer in his teaching by insisting that what we believe to be true is always most clearly expressed through how we act. Cohen began his career teaching a traditional form of Eastern Spirituality, but broke with that tradition on pragmatic grounds. Cohen insisted, in opposition to his own teacher, the Indian sage HWL Poonja, that if the Eastern notion of enlightenment was to mean anything, it could not be merely an inner experience of peace, bliss and detachment. Enlightenment, whatever it was internally, had to manifest as enlightened action in the world. Cohen, like Emerson and James before him, held that the human ability to choose and act was the defining characteristic of being human. He describes the human being as a “choosing faculty,” and maintains that the choice to evolve is the best way to define goodness in an evolving universe; and that inertia is the best description of evil.

Barbara Marx Hubbard, whose book, Conscious Evolution, is one of the seminal works in the modern movement of evolutionary spirituality, also describes an integrated evolution towards greater unity reminiscent of the earlier works of Peirce, James and Dewey. Her vision of our evolutionary future involves a global merging of individual human beings into a greater societal whole. In her book she writes:

We see the earth herself as a whole system. We are being integrated into one interactive, interfeeling body by the same force of evolution that drew atom to atom and cell to cell. Every tendency in us toward greater wholeness, unity and connectedness is reinforced by nature’s tendency toward holism. Integration is inherent in the process of evolution.

If we examine the writings of other modern leaders in the evolutionary spirituality movement we will find many elements of classical American philosophy that have found new expressions. Why is it that the tradition of American Philosophy appears to garner so little recognition from those inspired by these ideas? One reason might be that the very utilitarian streak that characterizes American Philosophy also makes most Americans disinterested in philosophical history. I believe another reason for this lack of recognition has to do with the cultural shifts that removed Pragmatism from the public eye in the middle decades of the twentieth century. After this dormant period, the philosophy of Pragmatism began to resurface in academic circles in the 1980s and it seems that the progressive mood that led to this resurgence of academic interest in Pragmatism might also be generating the surge of popular interest in evolutionary spirituality today.

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Integral Theory, Evolutionary Enlightenment and American Philosophy

April 27, 2009 · Leave a Comment

I am helping to put together an internet based seminar featuring Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber and I thought that I would write a blog post explaining how my interest in the work of these men led me to start this blog. I began to get excited about American philosophy through my study of Evolutionary Enlightenment (an evolutionary spiritual philosophy developed by Andrew Cohen) and Integral Theory (a perspective on the development of consciousness developed by Ken Wilber) and realized that the central insight of these two contemporary works is the same primary insight about the nature of reality that American philosophers have been wrestling with for centuries. That insight is the continuity between mind and matter.

One of the central tenets of American philosophy that stands in opposition to many European “idealistic” philosophies is that mind and matter are two aspects of one thing. There is not an “ideal” world of mind and a “real” world of matter – there is one world that includes both mind and matter. American philosophy from one point of view has been a long standing tradition of trying to find a way to understand the “oneness” of these two things that often seem so separate and that have in most philosophies from ancient times been described as separate.

Charles Peirce believed in the Hegelian idea of “objective idealism” and once wrote:

The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws.

William James dealt with this difficulty by saying that the only thing that was real was experience and that we lived in a universe built by a succession of experience. Sometimes our experience was of matter and the properties of matter. At other times our experience was of mind and the properties of mind. Either way it was all experience and we lived in what he called “a world of pure experience.”

And although Ralph Waldo Emerson was certainly an “Idealist” in belief, his experience of nature emphasized the unity of nature with the inner essence of being human.

Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory and Andrew Cohen’s Evolutionary Enlightenment both recognize that the inner and outer dimensions of  reality are aspects of a single evolving universe. After years of studying both of these, I was beyond intrigued to see that the history of American philosophy has been a history of this very same understanding.

Even now I am reading the American behaviorist B.F. Skinner and realizing that central to his view is exactly the same realization. He also insisted that there could be no mind separate from matter – but rather than seeing the world as being made up of pure experience as James had, he saw the world made up of pure behavior. I will write more about this fascinating topic as I read more about it.

I sometimes believe that I get a brief glimpse of the reality that these philosophers are trying to describe. I see that the universe as one unfolding event that has an inner and outer dimension. Being a human being is like being a nexus point that is aware of both the inner and outer dimensions simultaneously. We are not individual things that exist “on a planet” and “in the universe.” We are a nexus of perception between the inner and outer dimensions of reality.

You can find out about the internet seminar being held by Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber by clicking here.

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