Levels of Devils, Gradations of God

Rational minds are sick of irrational religion. But our problem is not religion. Our problem is low levels of religion is high positions of power.

Sam Harris wrote about it in The End Of Faith. Richard Dawkins crucified it in The God Delusion. Bill Maher lambasts it in the movie Religulous. These famous figures extol rationality and condemn mythic religion.

I am a fan of their work. I share many of their frustrations. I've also noticed they're missing something important; Depth perception. Religion comes in, and can be considered from, many levels of development. Harris, Dawkins, Maher and others use a horizontal approach to a vertical puzzle. Because of their flat approach, they're unable to note the difference between pre-rational minds and trans-rational souls.

For example, George Bush and Jesuit Priest 'Brother Dave' are both Christians. George Bush says there is a battle between good and evil. Brother Dave says God transcends (but includes) good and evil. George Bush knows God saves believers. Brother Dave says beliefs are mental constructs, and cannot approach God. To George Bush, God is personal, He administers and intervenes in each and every life, and it takes sides. To Brother Dave God is an ineffable Paradox with no characteristics, which is also immanent in all qualities. In developmental psychology, I would say George Bush is a mythic Christian at a pre-rational level of awareness. Pastor Dave is mystic Christian at a trans-rational level of awareness. They inhabit two distinct levels of the same religion. Otherwise sharp rational intellects haven't bothered to make this important distinction.

This rational blind spot might stem from the fact that these critiques (The God Delusion, The End of Faith, Religulous, etc) are delivered from a rational perspective. From a rational perspective, anything that is not rational looks merely "irrational". But in fact, psychological development unfolds in pre-rational, rational, and trans-rational stages. In simple terms, this means we can see and understand (or accurately criticize) the levels below us, but not the ones above or beyond us. In school, if we read at a fifth grade level, we're not able to adequately understand a twelfth grade text book. So it goes with God. Pre-rational minds encounter Reality through belief and myth. Rational minds encounter Reality through logic and reason. Trans-rational levels of awareness encounter Reality (or God) by means which are no less genuine, but definition, are beyond the reach of rational cognition. Trans-rational levels of awareness are no more "opposed" to rational levels of awareness than a 12th grade text book is "opposed" to a fifth grade text book. They simply address different developmental altitudes of awareness. However, it wouldn't be appropriate to have a fifth grader interpret (or teach) twelfth grade curriculum.

As stages of awareness unfold, the subject of one stage becomes the object of the next. As the self evolves, what once operated invisibly in our identity becomes "visible" (as we dis-identify with it), and we become able to operate on "it". So, if we inhabit a rational perspective, it is our sense of self, our subject. The sense of "I" locates itself with a rational view. It is able to see pre-rational content as an object in its awareness (because it has dis-identified with those characteristics). It's been there, it moved through the pre-rational, and was able to transcend it. Having done so, pre-rational content becomes an object in its awareness. But the equally real trans-rational realms are inscrutable to a rational subject. It has not yet begun to inhabit them, and because of this, the rational view confuses two very different categories. If we think of a person as a building that houses awareness, pre-rational is the 1st floor, rational is the 2nd floor, and trans-rational is 3rd floor. From the 3rd floor, we can see the furniture on the 2nd and 1st floor clearly. From the 2nd floor, we can see the 1st floor furniture clearly. However, from the 1st floor we cannot see the furniture on the 2nd floor, nor the 3rd floor. If we are on the 2nd floor, we cannot see the furniture on the 3rd floor. We don't know what's there. We can't see it.

It's a matter of development. We would not expect a fifth grader to understand Ulysses. But they'll get Harry Potter just fine. Distinct developmental levels don't just come with different World "views" (interpretive lenses), they ARE unique Worlds. They experience different Realities. The Reality that Bill Maher experiences through logic and reason is entirely distinct from the Reality that George Bush experiences through belief. To Bill Maher the virgin birth is a myth. To George Bush it is a reality as firm and concrete as the existence of the Moon or the United Nations. And that difference is not merely a matter of choice, or preference. It is a function of developmental levels of awareness, and varying depths of apprehension. Omitting this fact is one of the single greatest sources of turmoil and confusion in the social sphere.

To a rational mind, there is only what is rational and what is ir-rational. In other words, to a rational mind, there is only one floor in the building of awareness, the 2nd floor. A rational mind living on the 2nd floor does not recognize the difference between the 1st floor of awareness (pre-rational) and the 3rd floor of awareness (trans-rational), rather it simply says they are both irrational, illogical, unreasonable. Rationality experiences itself as being the highest level of development (a conceit most levels share), and so whatever is not "rational" is lumped into one category; ir-rational. And this is unfortunately how most rational pundits regard religion; As a flat, horizontal, uniform category. They conflate irrationality with religion. In fact, irrational could mean either pre-rational or trans-rational, two perspectives which could scarcely be more divergent.

Any refresher survey of the various developmental levels established by researchers like Kohlberg, Piaget, Fowler, Gilligan, Jane Loevinger, Graves, Kegan, and many others- reminds us that whatever we may not understand about the self (which is a whole lot), we do know that people develop. There are successive stages of awareness, or World views which our ego has available to it. Not everyone develops equally. Some people grow through pre-conventional, conventional, and into post-conventional world views. Others stop at conventional.

For instance, using James Fowlers developmental model of faith, I would say George Bush developed to a stage 2, or Mythic-Literal level of faith. Stage two persons have a strong belief in the justice and reciprocity of the universe and their deities are almost always anthropomorphic. Stage two of faith is most common in school children. Brother Dave, on the other hand, could be placed at a level 6, or Universalizing level of faith. This stage shares many traits with what is known as enlightenment. Fowler's developmental model measures seven stages (zero through six). The Christian Faith has members at every level. They inhabit very different worlds. It does not serve us to lump them together into one category, such as irrational.

This rational blind spot is two fold; First, it fails to recognize that 'God' and 'religion' are not fixed categories, but dynamic ones, with vertical levels of depth. The Mythic perspective assailed by rational pundits is actually one developmental level of religion. Second, the Mythic world view is a necessary and appropriate stage of human development. Like any developmental perspective, it has healthy and pathological forms. Discussions which do not consider the developmental depths of religion are literally 'flat', because they collapse all vertical perspectives into one category ("religion", for instance). Rational pundits like Maher, Harris, and Dawkins are launching a flat attack.

Developmental depth refers to the vertical chain of perspectives which unfold as a person's inner world matures. It is analogous to our height as we grow; we are able to see more of the world as we grow taller. So it is with awareness. Our inner world view -the way we organize reality with belief and knowledge- also develops. If we have developed in a healthy way, we know more when we're sixty than when we are six. Another word for this might be wisdom. Our experience changes, but it's also the way that we interpret experience which modulates. Santa Clause is part of our reality when we are six, and also when we are sixty. But we have distinctly different interpretations of Santa Clause at those two stages of life. It's not just what we know which develops, but how we know it. However -and this is especially important- it's not 'wrong' to be six years old.

A healthy sixty year old person does not look at a six year old child and wonder why they're naive enough to believe in Santa Clause. Rather, we make allowances for the developmental stages of life. We know it's normal and natural for a six year old to believe in Santa Clause. It's pre-rational sure. But every single human born goes through a pre-rational stage of development. Bill Maher, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins all developed through a pre-rational World view in order to acquire the rational perspective they now inhabit. No one gets to skip stages. As messy and mysterious as human development is, we do know that people do not skip developmental stages. No one starts life at stage six of Fowler's Stages of Faith. Piaget never reported an infant born at the Concrete Operational stage. Jane Loevinger never documented an Autonomous newborn. And every rational pundit on the planet today had to develop through a pre-rational stage of awareness. No exceptions.

It is not wrong to be six years old, and it is not wrong to see the World as a six year old does - as long as you're six years old. That's normal, that's healthy. What many rational minds take issue with (and I share their angst) is having someone like the President of The United States run the World with a child's mind. George Bush inhabits a stage two Mythic-Literal perspective that is developmentally appropriate for school children. He experiences and interprets reality from a pre-rational stage of awareness. What are the implications for our World when a child's mind is put in charge of the last remaining super power? That is not hyperbole, it is precisely what occurred during the Bush administration. He had a child's level of awareness, and child's understanding of religion.

The problem is not religion. The problem is people at low levels of awareness acquiring high positions of power.

The solution is to put people at high levels of development into high positions of power.

Knowing that, are we still interested in a flat approach to the (very real) problem of fundamentalist religion? The solution is vertical unfolding. In fact, the rational perspective -one which allows for such critical thinking and logical objectivity- is but one of the stations along that vertical unfolding. Human social development has for instance, through the ages, included these stages:

Archaic
Magic
Mythic
Rational
Pluralistic
Integral

We are not likely to persuade a mythic level of awareness to stop believing in their anthropomorphic Sky God. However cogent our argument may be, that ain't how it works. George Bush is not going to watch Religulous, or read The End of Faith, or The God Delusion, and suddenly 'get it'. Sadly, we can't persuade a mythic religious fundamentalist into a rational perspective anymore than we can persuade a six year old to become twenty seven.

The way people do (or do not) develop beyond certain perspectives is very mysterious to us. I think of it as being akin to the Dark Energy mystery in Cosmology. There's a lot we know about matter, and physics, and quantum physics. But there is more we don't know. That does not negate the existing body of scientific knowledge, but contextualizes it. There are larger enigmas in play, as yet inscrutable to our epistemologies. So it is with developmental psychology, and other maps of human evolution. There is a lot of dark matter. But we know people develop, and there is much that can be said about that process.

George Bush cannot be convinced through logic to abandon his Mythic Reality. Richard Dawkins cannot be persuaded to embrace trans-rational Reality. George Bush lives in a pre-rational World. Richard Dawkins inhabits a rational one. Brother David experiences a trans-rational Reality where the paradox of something and nothing are as natural to him as his left and right hands.

These are three very real levels of awareness -perspectives- available to people. Available, but not required. It is an endearing trait of most developmental levels that they can't help but use the language of their level, the tools of their stage, in trying to persuade other levels to "wake up". And so we have religious fundamentalists telling rational people that if they don't believe in the God of the Old Testament they will go to hell. Just believe, or else. And we have rational people explaining in clear, precise logic how irrational fundamentalism is. But it falls on deaf ears. Ironically, what ardent Rationalists miss is that the solution is evolution. Vertical evolution. We can encourage higher, deeper, more inclusive levels of develeopment.

Each developmental level comes with a certain "band-width" of frequencies it can pick up. The radio stations of awareness. Pre-rational radios don't pick up Rational stations. Broadcast whatever you will, but their antenna is not going to conduct that signal. Likewise, Rational radios do not register Pre-rational signals. They've dis-identified with that frequency, and so the transmission is off. And trans-rational radio signals won't be picked up by pre-rational or rational antennas.

However, is it possible George Bush could develop? That someday he might grow into a new perspective, change radio stations so to speak? If one level can't persuade or convince another to "change floors" in the building, then what does the trick? Obviously people do develop. Not always, not necessarily, but it happens. So, how, why, or when do people evolve to higher altitudes of consciousness?

Funny thing is, one strong factor in determining whether or not a person moves to a higher of level of development is whether or not they've been able to fully experience the previous one. Before we become something new, we need to fully be what we are. Before we leave the 1st floor of the building (pre-rational awareness) and move to the 2nd floor of the building (rational awareness), we need to fully experience our pre-rational World. Every developmental psychologist will tell you how crucial a strong foundation is for a child. Without one, we are beset with a lifetime of seemingly unsolvable riddles. And so the first thing we do in order to encourage healthy evolution is to allow people the time they need at each stage of life.

When we look at our children, this is relatively easy to understand and natural to practice. When we look at our President, it is more difficult and dangerous. It's developmentally appropriate -even adorable- for a six year old to believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Clause. It's developmentally disastrous for an adult -especially Heads of State- to believe in a virgin birth, or a Sky God that intercedes and guides the hands of World Leaders. Those World Views were appropriate thousands of years ago. In the age of nuclear weapons such anachronisms ensure our utter annihilation. The first step in ending this nightmarish scenario is for Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, all rationalists, and anyone with the cognitive capacity to recognize depth. We simply must understand that there are no such thing as flat categories. God, Religion, Spirituality, and Politics are all vertical puzzles, and until we make distinctions between pre-rational, rational, and trans-rational levels of development, we're just using flat tools on a vertical problem.

Let's just start by asking ourselves; Did the World always look the way it does to us now? Was there a time in our past when we had a very different understanding of what is real? Has our interpretation of Reality evolved as we've grown, or were we born using logic, deduction, and reason to tease apart the knots of knowing? Surely we remember being five, then ten, then fifteen, and the awkward, painful lessons that accompany the lifting of each successive veil. Is it possible there are other World views which are yet deeper, higher, more inclusive than the we inhabit now? Do we have the patience to help each other move, and the strength to keep each other from inflicting harm?

The problem is not religion. The problem is low levels of development acquiring high positions of power.

The solution is higher levels of development in high positions of power.