Postmetaphysically Conceiving of Inter-Religious Resonance

Hi guys!

What I was asking in my first email, that I think continues to be uncontested, is

why is an alternative theory needed in the first place, when so many of the 2nd and 3rd tier

teachers that we know feels comfortable with the idea

of the 3 faces of god and with the general idea that they are practicing in different

ways to get to the same "thing"?

I started saying that 2nd tier can see trough conceptual differences (while not erasing them).

I hear you Balder, and your preocupation appears for me perfect in the context settled by

father Mayer and Dr. Cameron calling for a Christianity clean from Buddhist interpretations.

But, as I said, I see most 2nd and 3rt tier teachers and lineage holders not having those problems

with recognizing that their realization is the same the others traditions are having.

On the contrary, I see Buddhist, Kabala, Christian and Dzogchen teachers being in agreement of using their traditions paths interchangeably, and sharing about the outcomes without much problems either (like the incredible agreement between Lama Surya and Sally Kempton that No Self and Self was the same thing, or Father Keatting accepting that the end of the Christian path is "becoming God", even if it was taboo).

And I feel (correct me if I am wrong) a type of agression (that I felt from Father Mayer also)

when this issues come up, because in a way its implying that all these teachers are projecting an agreement

that can't be there in the first place, you see? Kind of trying to reframe them and all their assesment on the contrary by force.

I was listening to Ken and Diane yesterday in the audio about Sexual Harassment, and something

similar pop up. Diane said that in postmodern culture a woman that says to a judge that she wanted

to have sex with her employer, that she wasn't forced, will get a reinterpretation from the judge contesting something like "you THINK you wanted, but really it was the masculine pressure on you. You didn't really have a choice", which takes all power out from women, it dissempower them totally.

Something similar I see here (and saw in the Mayer discussions) going on.

Is like all 2nd and 3rd tier accounts for a "finishing point in common" are by force reframed because from a postmodern perspective that simply cannot be happening; so we are saying to these teachers something like the judge to the girl: "you are NOT realizing the very same thing the other teacher from another tradition is realizing; you think you are, because you are being confused by Integral Theory (or anything), but that isn't really happening" you see?

That makes violence to their own interpretation which is inline with the 3 faces of god theory. To their own feeling that indeed it IS the same finishing point, and even that most of their practices are linked to each other's (which reabhilitates the kind of mapping Ken and Daniel Brown did, which found that most of the stages of the path are indeed universal, like Subtle illuminations, Causal void, and Non Dual awareness).

What do you both think of this?

Thank you and much love,

Fede

Hi, all.

I'm taking a very shallow stab at this. I am unable to do all this reading, however, because this topic concerns me so much I'm going to do the best I can and make mistakes. I'm sorry about the mistakes. Hopefully, you can just help me out and not disqualify me because I can't get it all. 

I followed the path laid out for me from Jonathan's thread, to Balder's thread to Balder's pdf paper. Yes, I'm attempting to look at that paper. It's got 26 pages in it! Shit! I'll never make it. But I'm gonna do my best and look for things I can talk about. 

#1 

Balder, I love the Abstract!

However, you open with a quote from Banerji that clouds the issue too much, imo. Ironically, I just listened to some videos of Gopi Krishna today who, you may know, made the unification of the World's religions a priority. 

Halbfass (via Banerji) is correct in identifying this priority, or at least interest, in traditional sectarian Indian thot. Clearly he has perspective on India. However, who is taking perspective of Halbfass? Religious unification happens to be one of the legitimate and valid gifts that Indian thot has to offer the world. As the Blue vMeme idea that it was for them (timestamp for Advaita Vedanta: 788-821 c.e., timestamp for Jainism: fuckin' OLD!), it rocked in comparison to many others. Go, India! Bless her sweet socks off!

So this cannot be considered true integration as integration is a newer development stabilizing only very recently. That idea must be something else. And true integration also must be something else entirely. Does Halbfass understand this? Does Banerji? This is too obscured by multiple speculations which don't have a large enough perspective. So, I don't think this quote was helpful. 

#2

However, if we have to dialog with systems of thot that believe they are on the edge but aren't, how do we proceed? Do we point out to them that they are comparing apples and oranges? Do we suggest that they are atoms and wouldn't know a molecule if it bit them on the nose? 

In your description of "exclusivism" and "pluralism" and "inclusivism", you've aranged them all on a flat surface with two at the ends and one inbetween them. Is this how it must be done? Because I don't believe that's how it is. But if we're going to have any shared meaning with people who cannot see a level higher, then how else are we going to proceed? 

At the bottom of the scale of development, there will be a duality. One will be good and the other will be bad. The good one will become a problem that the next level of development will solve. And there will again, be a duality. One will be good and the other will be bad. The good one will solve the problem of the last developmental level. And on and on it goes. The roots of the 3 words above have been riding this spiral quite a ways up and they have each gained in meaning and complexity at each level. There is far too much meaning in the words as you show them here to simply mark 3 spots on a line. They each have histories of both being problems as well as solving problems. I think this will be a priority complaint of Green that we have to take seriously. 

Therefore, any attempt to create a flat surface upon which to lay our distinctions or categories - especially in one simple straight line! - will creat a problem for the staunch pomo thinker. Even tho it may be tricky, I see no option but to take their bet and raise it. Bring them up a level. 

If there are multiple others with completely unrelated otherness, ask them to name the field within which they float. If they can conceive of unrelated otherness, and you can also, and both are aware that together you make up completely different perspectives from which to view unrelated otherness, what will they call THIS awareness that we are now together speaking from? 

Don't make a move until they name the space. 

Then both can proceed with shared meaning. Demonstrate to them that you can value at least as much otherness as they can, or else they will never risk. At that point all those wonderful thinkers and amazing thots will stop being ammunition and become beautiful flowers in a field that there can never be too many of. They will stop making performance contradictions because they have named the field. 

And this is actually the point. 

I was reading the "EnlighteNext" article on Jean Gebser the other night and understood his deep shift in perspective this way: He went from not being aware that we all swam in an ocean of fear, to being aware that we all swam in an ocean of fear to being aware that there is an ocean of trust to swim in instead. Everything is in this ocean. Even things which fear and compete against others and kill to survive - all can now be trusted to be part of some larger something. Something friendly, instead of something scary. 

This something scary is the field that the pomo Nazi is afraid of. His own awareness holds things with benevolence because he is protecting them from those who hold them with malevolence. In his case, malevolence is anything that exerts a downward control or dishonor. It must be demonstrated that the Integral thinker can hold with infinite benevolence - even beyond his own. Let us do so. This will not interfere or hinder the Integral solution at all. It will only make it more clear. 

The Integral solution isn't really about control or dishonor. We know that, but the super-pomo will not. It must be demonstrated. 

One of the things that some pomo thinkers did was dismantle the assumption that a reader/listener can understand the writer/speaker and Objects can be held together with common meaning asigned to them from all sides. Fine. But what about the Subject? What kind of Subject did they create in so doing? Can I determine if that Subject is friendly or dangerous (even if I can't, perhaps you can) regardless of whether I understand what they're talking about? Am I even aware of this? Even when Derrida got reallyfreakin'weird, if you could be aware of him as a Subject, you could still tell he was a benevolent man. If you couldn't see him as Subject, you called him a "terrorist". 

Unfortunately, there has been alot of hyperbole coming from Integral about expressions of "exclusivism". Even if the Objects being talked about can be understood, the subject speaking seems to often be malevolent. Our tone will be seen by some pomo thinkers even if they cannot see their own. And if we cannot become aware of this, we lose the whole game. If we ask them to name the field of awareness, they will become aware of it, and their tone will become an Object we can point to. 

If they want to deconstruct the Subject too, then we can sit and do "neti-neti" all day with them. Right? So what? Who's gonna make dinner? 

We're going to have to do alot of clean up. We should be cleaning up our language. But we should also especially be cleaning up our mood and tone. Myself included. 

#3

I disagree with Cheng that all religions should be seen as integral parts of a development process. That is backwards. Development takes place within religions. 

Panikkar is closer. 

Ferrer & Sherman don't seem to be saying anything significant. Yeah, events can't be determined or reduced to linguistic categories, but understanding can accomodate them. The Subject is the container and while it may not be a System, you can name it Fred. It is still an Object in the awareness. 

D'Costa makes this even more plain. Bless him. His critics, like Derrida's, are getting lost in the Objects. It's the Subject that matters.  

OKAY!

So, Postmetaphysical Enactive Spirituality sounds closer to what I'm trying to describe but JESUS y'all are using alot of words there! wth

I'm starting to choke on the text and can't concentrate any longer. Going to bed now. LOL Can't believe I made it past half way!  WOOT!

--

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Hi, Everyone, I woke up this mornning with a number of thoughts around this issue, so I am putting them down before I forget them.  I see there are five new posts from when I went to bed last night, and I haven't read them yet, but I'll post this anyway and let it stand as it is, and then I'll go back and read all the new content. 

Does the "causal" have a wisdom in itself?  It seems that, if we admit that "coming out" of the causal we then have to interpret it -- and even if we agree that the causal is a state in which interpretation dies out and there is only the bare immediacy of the boundless-seeming causal state --, we do not escape "particularity" even on the level of enlightenment or "fulfillment" or "realization," because "emptiness and view are not two," and therefore view plays a role in the type of "realization" that dawns.  So, what is the "wisdom" of the causal, such that we can say it is identical across all traditions? 

Not all religions aim for causal realization, of course.  We might say that they should -- a spiritual normative argument -- and that may be spiritually defensible, out of compassion, because the individual who has realized the causal has realized a powerfully transformative openness and freedom, but that is why I say it might be better, in terms of serving an "interreligious" function, for Integral to just concentrate on creating its own particular form of spirituality and then entering into constructive engagement with other traditions, rather than trying to provide an "objective" map of reality appropriate for all religions. 

My thoughts in this regard were influenced by Steve McIntosh, an Integral author who nevertheless says he respects but is not comfortable adopting Wilber's primarily Buddhist-Vedantin religion.  He believes that Wilber has placed a particular religious worldview at the center of his map, and this detracts (in McIntosh's view) from Integral's effectiveness.  He argues that Integral, instead, should strive to be a philosophy, without making definitive soteriological and religious commitments, and allow various traditions to do that in their own ways, using basic Integral distinctions -- like the Good, True, and Beautiful; a developmental, evolutionary understanding; the 8 zones; etc.  The influence Steve had on me is just that he prompted me to respect his position, as an Integral thinker who nevertheless doesn't feel spiritually "served" by the spiritual model at the core of some of the current presentation of Integral Theory.  My thought was that the enactive, postmetaphysical "foundation" of current Integral Theory can allow this to be done -- preserve and respect religious particularity, allowing for an integral understanding of, and approach to, multiple soteriologies.

I'm curious what ideas of Fowler you are referring to, Fede, when you say that Fowler basically argues that all religions lead to the same identical wisdom.  In his chapter on Stage 6, Fowler discusses the absoluteness of the particular.  Here, his argument is somewhat similar to that of Almaas in my previous post: he says, "For persons committed to and through religious faith to work together on questions of religious truth means to take with radical seriusness the absoluteness of the particular.  Now let me say what I mean by this deliberately provocative term.  Absoluteness means here 'bearing the quality of ultimacy.'  Absoluteness in a tradition of religious faith is constituted by those moments in it which the structure and character of the ultimate conditions of existence are disclosed... The absoluteness that comes to expression in some moments of a religious tradition is not to be identified with the absolutes that adherents of a tradition may fashion about it.  Put another way, absoluteness is a quality of the transcendent that comes to expression in revelation, but not necessarily of the symbols, myths, propositions, or doctrines formulated to represent or communicate it.  Further -- and this is the most important point -- absoluteness, as a quality of the transcendent that comes to expression, is not exclusivistic.  Presumably, the absoluteness of the divine character can come to expression in different forms and in different contexts, with each of these instances bearing the full weight of ultimacy.  All of this means -- if it is correct -- that the most precious thing we have to offer each other in interfaith encounters is our honest, unexaggerated and nonpossessive sharing of what we take ot be the moments of absoluteness in the particular faith traditions in which we live as committed participants."  He then frames universalizing faith eschatalogically, e.g., in futurity, promise; which is what I did also in my paper (e.g., "Kingdom Come").

I see a similarity to Almass in the above quote in that he both has faith in the "ultimate source" of religious truths (Universal Logos), but allows for unique, particular expressions of the absolute in different traditions (logoi), not insisting that they all do or say or lead necessarily to the same "result."

In my work on my paper, one idea I toyed with, and took notes on but did not include, was the intuition that the dawning "Unique Self" perspective in Integral Theory also impacts how we view traditions: as Unique, irreducible, expressions of the divine.  Later, at the conference, I was surprised and pleased to find that Dustin DiPerna had already had this idea (he proposed Unique Self and Unique We distinctions).  One reason I opted not to include this idea in my own paper, however, was that, when I reflected on it, it still seemed a little rooted in a conception similar to John Hick's form of pluralism, which I was critiquing as inadequate...  Needless to say, my thoughts around this are still forming.

Two other things:

My thoughts on this question have also been influenced by an essay by Ferrer and Sherman.  In this paper, Ferrer argues that there is no reason to conclude that nonconceptual disclosures of spirit are identical.  He suggests that there can be unique nonconceptual realizations or "experiences," and cautions against assuming that all traditions which lead to nonconceptual spiritual experience therefore "disclose" or involve the exact same "thing."

Two, concerning the three faces of spirit, there are other approaches that have been proposed which seem similar but which are not exactly reducible to the "three faces" idea.  For instance, John B. Cobb, following Whitehead, suggests that there may be at least three spiritual "ultimates" -- the Personal godhead, the impersonal creativity of God, and the cosmic expression of the ultimate.  He suggests that theistic religions are focusing on the first, impersonal religions like Buddhism are focusing on the second, and some "primal religions" are focusing on the third.  (For the latter, I believe he is referring to modern adherents of primal religions, who are capable of sophisticated cognition and aren't simply pre-rational "primitives.")  He also, based on Whitehead, would carefully distinguish the godhead and the creativity of god, rather than regarding them as "two perspectives on" or "two faces of" the same "thing."  There are also several (post-)pluralist "trinitarian" views of the ultimate that have been proposed, which also seem similar to -- but not reducible to, or understandable exactly as, the "three faces" idea (see the writings of Panikkar or Heim, for instance).  And Almaas has his own vision in Diamond Approach, which again accounts for the three perspectives on the divine that Wilber wants to emphasize with his "three faces" approach, but which is not simply the "same idea" as Wilber's.  My point here may be too "fine" a one, but this is it:  looking cross-paradigmatically, we can see that each of these approaches seems to be concerned with making similarly broad and inclusive distinctions, but each is doing it in its own way, and those ways each have (I believe) practical effects that are unique and not simply reducible to each other.  They are related enactments, and therefore are "resonant," but we don't have to frame this in "representationalist" terms as "they are all looking at the same object." 

I mentioned that I wanted to bring in some of Panikkar's tools to help articulate this view.  One of the "tools" is Panikkar's notion of homeomorphic equivalence.  Basically, homeomorphic equivalence suggests that certain elements of spiritual systems might serve similar functions in the "economy" of those spiritual systems, and these homeomorphic functions can be recognized through cross-paradigmatic analysis and interfaith encounter and exploration, but because they each belong to a unique logos and mythos, they are not reducible to each other in a one-to-one fashion (and they don't need to be). 

Great paper, and great post, and awesome commentary!

I just wanted to throw my 2 bits in:

Federico hit the point I was thinking about. I see a fundamental singularity point in all discourse that Wilber speaks of. The distinction between the Absolute and the Relative. AQAL is a discourse on, and within the content of Relative reality, which is the ink used to carry the discourse. The paper upon which the discourse is written is the Absolute context. In speaking of where differing and unique paths lead, you get to the Absolute, and here discourse stops.

In my opinion that is why Balder's suggestion of a in-love invitation makes so much sense, but I think that there is still a difficulty with releasing the Absolute to be as such, and there is an attempt to continue a discourse about it. As Ken Wilber often paraphrases Nagarjuna, "You can't say it's A, nor B, nor both, nor neither."

Whenever these discussions try to include the Absolute in the discourse, rather than as the well-spring, context, container and ultimate goal of all discourse, they fall short in my opinion by nature of the very fact that they are discourse. Discourse is always about the real, and is in itself part of the real and therefore can never capture the real in an absolute sense.

Cheers for the awesome discourse!

Hi guys!

Let put aside "Spiritual Inclusivism" for a moment.

Take any line in AQAL.

For example, the Values line.

That line (disclosed by Spiral Dynamics) tells that Teal values transcend and includes
Orange values. And therefore that Teal values are more comprehensive, more functional, 
than Orange values.

This is inclusivism as its best right? And violence as well.

Would a modernist thinker feel it's truth that Integralism (which he doesn't agree with in many accounts) is
inevitabely more comprehensive, more inclusive, than his modern stance? Who says that is the case?

Would a Blue dogmatic Buddhist accept that his values are indeed transcended and included in
a Ken Wilber or a Roger Walsh? Is not all that violence to his values and beliefs?

Take the Moral line:

Would a person with a conventional level in the moral line, accept that people with a post-conventional moral level
actually trasncend their moral understanding?

Would a conventional moral person accept that a non-traditional, so called post conventional relationship is one that is being lived from a post-conventional moral level that he cannot understand nor even see??

Of course Inclusivism is Painful and Aggressive. And Development is about transcend and INCLUDE, so Inclusivism is an agenda of Development, we just cannot escape that!

I think that this is better to acknowledge and to make it cosncious: We will be being agressive and impossing values, moral judgements, cognition types, and so on from higher to lower levels.

We do it all the time! We are currently (at a political level) impossing Green values (ie. sensible care for minorities) over Orange values (ie. freedom of individual speech) and though if you insult a Travesti on the street you could go to prison.

So why is this so different in the Spiritual arena?

I actually find it far more easy to agree in what spirituality means among people, than to agree about what Morals should be, or what Values are higher than others!!!!

I don't want to be agressive (), but I think an over-reaction or a disgust with being agressive in a developmental sense is a natural side-effect of the coming into being of 2nd tier; but I think that disgust should be trasncended!

We say that Teal hold the paradox between relatives and universals.

We all get the "relative" part :)

Then, where are the universals?

When we try to state even only one Universal (ie. the absolute) half of the community starts to feel a headache.

And I understand it. And I think that's a healthy sign.

But we should go over it.

Imagine you were doing the tests and research about Moral development!

that would be definetely a lot more disturbing, doesn't it?

What do you think?

Love,

Fede

Last notes

Guys, I want to tell you again how much I appreciate this (I am moving to the US because I want this kind of discussions happening "live" and with the physical resonance that comes with it; I want to grow and I think this is at least one of the ways to do that!)

I love you guys! Bruce, David and everyone here. Thank you so much!! I feel like we are in the same house, sharing insight and discussing round a fire.

I'm heading Paris center for some paperwork. Think this will be my last post, but hope this discussion to continue without me.

------------------------------------------------

David has agreed with the 3 points of my recapitulation. Bruce, I think, agree at least with the first 2:

1) a need for putting an Absolute as an Universal. Something that even postmodernists may accept if we propose it as an "involutionary given"; and something that, even if not accepted by postmodernism (which denials universals), nonetheless we could, as Teal or higher Integral thinkers, revalidate and claim to be truth.

2) a need for recognizing Unique, different wisdoms that were and are created around that Absolute and the experience of it.

3) the need to rank those Wisdoms in a way that doesn't put one religion over the other; in other way, arriving to a Ranking or Structuralism that is not based on one religion's belief, but on patterns detected by a laic community, for example.

I will bring to the discussion my last recapitulation on the 3rd point.

Neurophenomenology is a correct tool for making a laic structuralizing of mystical experiences.

This doesn't involve beliefs, and the scientifics doing it may be even laic or atheist.

The general concept is:

Taking practitioners at different stages of different traditions (ALL traditions have stages of the path; see Saint Jhon's or Teresa's ones) and examining their phenomenology.

Comparing the phenomenology of different stages of the path across traditions, in a laic way, trying to find structural differences:

for example, at first, in every traditions, there is a strong presence of visions. Then, all traditions enter a kind of Void where all manifestation appears to stop.
Then...(some of them could stop at one or another phenomenological Type of account).

Then, you structure those phenomenologies in groups according to structural characteristics, and in relationship with the Natural States (which, to a laic mind maybe by coincidence, present a coincidence with those mystic phenomenological accounts).

So because they find them to be identical in structure (Dreaming phenomenologyes are very similar structuraly to Subtle, beginners kind of experiences in all traditions) then they discover them to be linked.

Then you add the UR correlate of Brain Wave patterns, studing the patterns across traditions across stages of the path.

And there you have it.

you find that all traditions, that inherently have stages toward a goal. Those stages are found to be structurally equal (not in contents, but it structure) by phenomenology and are found to be linked to the Natural States (wake, dreaming...) by laic neurophenomenology, and are found to have correlates in the UR.

With all this data, you have a map of "cross traditions stages of the path" that orders the phenomenological accounts into a series of structural stages (gross-sublte-causal-non dual) that are representative for all traditions.

Incidentally, as Integral Spiritual Center is kind of demonstrating, teachers coming from every tradition (almost) in the world find this structuralizing model a good one, suitable to their experience.

We have to distinguish accounts from non-contemplative Christians (we can ignore them, as having lost the Christian core that  Sain John or Teresa or Father Thomas or Jesus were teaching, wich was Contemplative) than those from contemplative Christians, Sufis, Buddhists and so on.

All of them apparently share this structural model (that is, again, in my opinion, scientific and laic).

We have, in AQAL, then, an universal model of Spiritual Growth that suits all traditions (in their complete versions, nor the non-contemplative, incomplete versions).

A model NOT based on Advaita or Buddhist models (may be historically, but not today and not since 2000's Wilber V).

A model that stands as a "Theory of everything" of religions.

LOVE for everyone here.

I love you really.

Best for you and your loved ones.

Fede

It sure sounds to me that at least the highlights were covered in this discussion, I went back and read most of the comments again and if I am not mistaken there may be one more detail that we might be able to discuss. I have been considering the argument for a Nondual Theory or Philosophy that was proposed by Panikker in the “Pluralism of Truth”, although I don’t exactly agree I began with the thoughts that we should indeed assume the nondual role. An Integral Spirituality should take that perspective without calling it such, the name itself (nondual) implies TWO whereas the Reality implies a directionality towards what can be theorized. We need to begin somewhere and as long as we continue to name the Absolute is if were something out there or other we have no chance of creating the level of discourse that brings resonance throughout the Traditions. Integral Spirituality should give Ultimate Subjectivity to the Absolute, what is other than Subject cannot be articulated except through Art and great Literature. Even so, the door that opens through the senses can be transmitted along this level of discourse, this I perceive is the most harmonious exchange whereby we can truly embrace all expressions. We are not in competition, instead we become like musical notes…appreciating every sound.

I realize that not all Traditions find completion in nondual realization, one minor reason why I would not label it as such, but what I am convinced of is that all Traditions presuppose the Absolute as being all of Reality.

To Order higher and higher Truths is a "becoming" or “Thy Kingdom Come”, in the same way we do not absolutize our own perspectives, rather our disposition is that which is “never enough”.

Hi Bruce, David, and everybody! I hope you had a beautiful week. It was indeed a very beautiful and moving retreat (www.harmonicworld.com) and touching in many areas of my future.

Coming today home, I hear both brother Steindl-Rast/Ken Wilber audios, and Stanich/Wilber audios (about Fowler) recommended this week.

After hearing them, my sensation of dissapointment with this discussion (and Bonnitta's) and much of what I read form ITC in general came stronger than ever :( I'm really sorry to express it and hope it don't hurt anybody's feelings but is what I feel. 

It seems for me obvious that both what I discussed to Bonnitta and what we discussed with Balder is already resolved and not recently, but many years ago, and that these critiques would fall appart in kind of a 15 seconds conversation with Ken, or even with many of the teachers that are since many years (if not decades) "living" this ideas (like brother Steindl-Rast).

I'm sorry that I will not be able (even if I will love to with all my heart) to keep up with this discussion, cause I have a kind of 100-things-to-do week and then a concert and another retreat.

But anyway I would like to insist to everyone that hooked up into this discussion, or Bonnitta's one, to hear both brother Steindl and Stanich audios, because they are kind of revelations on how this subjects are, in my opinion, resolved and harmoniously integrated already in AQAL and in the Integral Spirituality movement.

The critical audios I recommend to not-lose are these (and some keys to find in them):

http://integrallife.com/node/81648 (both audios, brother Staindl-Rast and Wilber)
    -(to Bonnitta): Ken and brother Staindl affirming how limits come again "online" after enligthenment or Christ-Self revelation, and how we still have to deal with manifestation, where things ARE separated, and how that separation or limits become Sacred Limits or Divine Limits in that revelation (that's what I argued to her in my response). We will never be able to speak of Kosmos as one, because really there is no One, but One and the Many.

    -the degree to which for a second or third tier stage of Spiritual Inteligence most of the religious concepts are mostly interchangeably (and you find Brother using a lot of Buddhist, 1st person concepts interchangeably with the Christian 2nd person versions)

    -a complete reinterpretation of Christian Creed from a Christian Third Tier perspective, which leaves all claims of the styles of father Mayer or Dr. Cameron Freeman as fallacy and nonsense.

   -the understanding, that David so many times pointed out and Bruce has been not very responsive to, that the ONLY Christian traditions that should be taken into account in this discussion are the ones that kept their esoteric-contemplative core alive, and that only those qualify as Spiritual Traditions, so the rest, we should ignore. In short: mainstream Catholisism (between others) doesn't count as an authentic Spiritual Tradition. 

http://integrallife.com/node/40372 (The Stages of Faith, Stanich and Wilber)

-the confirmation that Ken himself believes in a 7th stage of Spiritual Inteligence that indeed can find the universal meaning of Spirituality, and the exact description of that stage)

http://integrallife.com/editorial/evolutionary-panentheism-godview-todays-world (Evolutionary Panentheism, Wilber and brother Steindl-Rast)

It seems for me the discussion (and the stage of) the integral enterprise regarding religion is further away from the issues we engaged in this thread (and from the ones Bonnitta was proposing as well).

I would like, also, to humbly propose that these critiques (like Balder's and Bonnitta's) could be mailed-sended to Ken for his response; I don't know if he can actually respond or not, but I imagine he could, and that would be, I believe, a much quicker way of having a response.

I mean, I feel it's kind of lose of time to have so passionate discussion about anything, which was already been resolved (including taking most if not all the arguments in account) in the past. Like people in Integral World discussing if Development studies are consistent or should be taken into account in a Theory of Everything.

I'm sorry if anything of what I say seems rude, I don't mean it, but I have to be faithful to what I believe (that could be obviously wrong) is happening, including what I continuously and humbly understand as not-that-good critiques.

Love to everyone.

Sorry if I don't catch up with this discussion, I will join you all again

as far as possible.

LOVE!

Fede 

Thank you all.