Religion in the Modern World

Sally Kempton

Sally Kempton, formerly known as Swami Durgananda, is recognized as a powerful meditation guide and as a spiritual teacher who integrates yogic philosophy with daily life. She is the author of the best-selling book Meditation for the Love of It, and writes the popular Wisdom column for Yoga Journal. She is a teacher in the tantric tradition of Kashmir Shaivism, conducts workshops and retreats on its applied philosophy, and is also a core founder and faculty of iEvolve: Global Practice Community.

Sally Kempton is a pioneer in more integral, comprehensive forms of spiritual teaching, and she is also the last one who would ever make a big fuss about it. But we think Sally is worth getting excited about. Born to socially-conscious parents (her father was a Pulitzer Prize-winning liberal news columnist), Sally went on to a career as a feminist activist and writer for publications such as The New York Times, Esquire, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and Harpers. She was an example of the leading edge of the socially-consciousness political Left, where religion and spirituality were generally seen as "the opiate of the masses," and one of the most oppressive forces in human history.

"Back in the 60s and 70s—and also today—from the point of view of social activists, to have any form of interiority was actually seen as traitorous, selfish, and a way of 'going to sleep on the job.'"

That all changed when Sally experienced an insight so powerful that only spiritual or mystical terms seemed to apply. Here, Sally and Ken talk about the absolutely crucial distinction between mythic, dogmatic pre-rational forms of religion and spirituality (think Crusades, homophobia, etc.), and the direct, experience-it-for-yourself trans-rational forms of religion and spirituality (think liberation, enlightenment, etc.) The tragedy is that the social and political Left—not that the Right does any better—rarely make this distinction: all they see is the conservative, traditional, literalistic form of religion that is responsible for a good deal of suffering, and therefore miss entirely the core mystical truths at the contemplative center of every major religion, whereby liberation is a direct experience of ever-present Spirit, not the salvation promised by strict belief in a mythic god.

What makes Sally such an extraordinary teacher is that she started as one of the leading exemplars of spirituality's chief opponent—the social-activist Left—and only through direct experience and years of training did she come to know personally the heart of spirituality really is. She has lived, and excelled, on "both sides of the street." Together, Sally and Ken explore what a 21st-century spirituality might look like, a truly Integral spirituality, and the exciting steps each one is making toward making this vision come to life. This new expression of spirituality can be adorned—if one chooses—with the beloved symbols of the sacred tradition one feels most drawn to. Integral Spirituality is both a bold new path into the future of spiritual meaning, but resting always on, and transcending and including, the work and devotion of all who have come before us, clearing the path so that we could see all the more clearly who we really are....

An Integral Approach to spirituality introduces and applies the revolutionary synthesis of both structures of consciousness (archaic, magic, mythic, rational, pluralistic, integral, super-integral) and states of consciousness (gross-waking, subtle-dreaming, causal-deep-sleep, witnessing-turiya, nondual-turiyatita). Nearly any state of consciousness can be experienced at any stage or structure of consciousness, which is why, for example, one can have a genuine mystical experience of nondual unity consciousness, and then interpret that to mean that Jesus Christ is the one true savior, and only those who believe in him will be saved.