Touching the Face of Tomorrow

Michael Beckwith

Dr. Beckwith is the founder and spiritual director of the Agape International Spiritual Center—one of the most rapidly expanding transdenominational spiritual communities with a membership 9,000 strong and 35,000 friends worldwide-his goal remains the same: to build community, locally and globally.

Marc Gafni

Dr. Marc Gafni is a cutting edge evolutionary visionary, a provocative spiritual artist and teacher, academic, public intellectual, author, social activist, and lover of people. He holds a doctorate, written on Nondual Humanism in Kabbalah taken at Oxford University under the co-supervision of Prof. Moshe Idel. He serves as the founding co-director and teacher in residence of iEvolve Global Practice Community. He is also the founding co-publisher of Incorrect Inc, scholar in residence at Pacific Coast Church, and lead teacher at Shalom Mountain Retreat Center Wisdom School.

Written by Colin Bigelow

Rev. Michael begins the dialogue by sharing some of the history of Agape, as well as a few memorable anecdotes from his college years. It was, after all, as a young man studying psychobiology that his spontaneous recognition of "the Presence" first appeared—not to mention a host of other things that you wouldn't want to tell your professor about. Now, decades later, Rev. Michael is redefining the term "higher education," and he goes on to give some of the latest updates about the brand-new Agape University.

Marc then turns the dialogue towards love. As he shares, the popular notion is that love is something that "happens to you"—like getting hit by lightning. Going on, he introduces the Kabbalist notion that love is not simply an emotion that happens to you, but is a deep spiritual perception that one can enact. Specifically, Marc is referring to a very high form of love, where one can perceive the non=dual interconnectivity of all things, and all persons. As he points out, not only can this perception spontaneously drop upon you—"arousal from above"—but it can be actively engaged through practice (thereby transforming a state experience into a stage competence).

Ken takes a moment to situate the conversation in a kind of broader theoretical (AQAL) framework. As he explains, one of the great contributions of postmodern thought was its understanding that there is no such thing as perception, only perspectives. In the manifest world, there is no such thing as "pure perception," because all perceptions are necessarily situated in the perspectives of the sentient beings in which those perceptions are arising. And, not only can one take a first-, second-, or third-person perspective on any given occasion, but the level of development of the individual taking those perspectives will fundamentally determine what the content of that occasion will be. Bringing it back to the current conversation, if someone isn’t able to perceive, say, Divine Love, it’s because they either aren't open enough to access that perception as a state, or they aren't developed enough to access that perception as a stage.

Make no mistake about it, these three souls are exploring today's spirituality; and in so doing, are touching the face of tomorrow. From the leading edge of Spirit's own unfolding, an edge that appears to be nothing less than integral, what does it mean to describe the contours of Spirit? What does it mean to commune with that great Other? What does it mean to be that One without a second?

Truly, there could hardly be a more exciting inquiry. If you dare, we invite you to hop on and hold tight, because this three-engine locomotive is racing God to a rendezvous with tomorrow, and they might just win....

Image: Eyes by Mark Henson