AC: And because the world of form is constantly evolving, without that half of the story being taken into consideration—and always being updated—it's inevitable that our responses are going to miss the mark.

KW: Right. It's also important to take into consideration that in today's world, less than two percent of the population are at integral waves of development. Seventy percent of the world's population is at mythic or lower, which are ethnocentric levels of development. You know, there were a lot of people, particularly us boomers, who felt we had the new paradigm that was going to be the greatest transformation in the history of the world—this holistic, "everything is one, Gaia great Goddess" kind of thing. And that can be a wonderful turquoise belief [For an explanation of the basic stages of Spiral Dynamics, see www.wie.org/spiraldynamics]. But unfortunately only a half of a percent of the population is at a cognitive level that can actually comprehend that turquoise conception. The rest of the world is at red (egocentric) and blue (absolutist) and orange (scientific/rational) and is just nowhere near that kind of thing. So we're not going to get some future spiritual orientation that's going to save this planet. The chances of that happening are virtually nil. So an enlightened society wouldn't just be one that had its governance systems coming from an integral level of development. It would also need to include sane ways that people could be at these earlier stages of development—ways that didn't harm the planet.

AC: Right.

KW: It's a very delicate, difficult topic to talk about. If you read someone like Thomas Berry, you get the sense that if we just adopted this nice holistic worldview, then everybody would be happy. But that's not going to change the fact that people are still at earlier stages of development, and simply learning a new worldview is not going to help them. That's just an exhortation. It's a goal without a path. You really have to have an understanding of the development of consciousness. Otherwise, just exhorting people to adopt new paradigms is pretty worthless. People can sound the alarm—everybody's been doing that for decades. But what we're short on are actual paths for interior development that would deliver that goal.

AC: Yes, we certainly are. And especially now, we need paths for interior development that are appropriate, as I was saying earlier, for the unprecedented complexity of the times we're living in. And, as you were saying, we need paths that will take into account the entire spectrum of human development. But those at the leading edge, those who will be in a position to recognize and appreciate the developmental perspective, especially need a path that will challenge them to meet the demands of today's dramatic life conditions. They need a path that not only will facilitate the experience of transcendence or personal release but, more significantly, will catalyze a leap beyond relativism that compels the individual to engage the life process at a level of deeper authenticity and maturity—a maturity that would, by its nature, recognize and freely embrace a greater responsibility for the future of life itself. If the impulse to awaken, the desire for enlightenment, is going to ultimately be able to elevate the consciousness of this world, then that urge is going to have to occur within a context that is informed by the fact that for better or worse the world is in a state of rapid change—change that desperately needs our conscious cooperation and participation. The spiritual impulse, the urge for transcendence, becomes evolutionary only when it becomes a duty—

KW:—an obligation.

AC: Yes! A duty, obligation, and commitment. A commitment to completely give oneself over to what we could ultimately call our spiritual obligation: the total transformation of the manifest world, using whatever our God-given capacity is. Along the lines of everything we've been speaking about, and as we've previously discussed, I think that we may also need to redefine what the meaning of enlightenment itself is for the time we're living in. We may need, as Caleb Rosado mentioned, a more "relevant" definition. Traditionally, the emphasis has been on transcendence or the discovery of and abidance in the empty ground of being beyond the world and beyond time. But at the beginning of the twenty-first century, I question whether this kind of orientation is really relevant or appropriate. In fact, I feel that the whole purpose of enlightenment or going beyond ego, in our own time is to enable us to finally be truly available to participate in the transformation of the manifest world from a position of higher consciousness or development. Right now, this is truly what is needed more than ever. Indeed, and this is what's so important to understand, as long as there remains in the seeker of enlightenment any clinging to a posture of transcendence, even if it's a subtle one, the effect will be that one will still, to some degree, be divided. And that division will inhibit one's ability to act because one will still be holding on. And so this is why there is such a great need at this time to give the evolutionary context more and more precedence in the way the path to enlightenment is presented.

KW: As part of that comprehensive vision, yes. I mentioned before the simple notion that there is the world of form and the world of the formless, and then their union, their nondual one taste, their coming together (which is, in fact, what they already are). There's a plus and a minus to each of those domains, if you will, and there is always a pitfall if one emphasizes only one of them. So what I try to do when we're talking about integral spirituality is to look at the pitfalls of all of those domains if we don't embrace all of them together. And you're describing beautifully the pitfall of continuing to get into merely the transcendental component, which, in fact, is the subtlest block to nondual realization.

AC: Right. As long as we're divided, even subtly, in our passion, i.e., more attached to the position of transcendence than to total, unrestricted, unselfconscious, full-hearted, full-bodied, ecstatic, and fully committed engagement with the life process, inevitably, on gross and subtle levels, we will be resisting, not abiding as that total release and complete engagement with the life process.

KW: I agree. In the experiential introduction that I've had to some of this, it's almost a tension around the heart that excludes manifestation. Does that make sense to you?

AC: Yes.

KW: It seems like a transcendental freedom or purity, and certainly at the beginning it has more freedom than a mere immersion in passing finite domains. But when you get in and sort of look around, there's very subtle tension that actually represents a contraction and that holds samsara, the manifest world, at bay, as if it's some sort of disease—very subtly. But that is the final barrier to radical love or radical release or radical embrace—an embrace that then finds itself both prior to the manifest world but not other than the manifest world in any way whatsoever. It really is a sort of radical embrace of evolutionary form as its own body, its substance, its own vitality, its own manifestation.

AC: And that impulse, the liberated impulse for that radical embrace, is freedom itself already. That's why nothing needs to be held on to.

KW: Exactly. And it's an exuberant embrace that's both joyful and a sense of duty, as you say.

AC: Yes, a sense of duty that commits us to a task that will never end. So the whole point is to be able to embrace manifestation with an ever-widening reach while ever remaining rooted in the unborn, unmanifest ground that always is and always was.

KW: Yes, that's true. Because, of course, the other pitfall, which I think is much more common in today's culture, is the mere immersion in the manifest realm, the merely pagan orientation. The pitfall there, of course, is that you have no transcendence. You have no freedom from the finite realm. You have no unborn. And you don't know your original face, the face you had before the big bang. And then that's celebrated as if it's integral spirituality! And all of the transcendental impulses are condemned. But unfortunately, you can't really embrace Gaia until you transcend Gaia. Otherwise, you have a mere addiction to the finite realm. You're not embracing it with love; you're embracing it with basically the same addiction you would heroin or any sort of sensory indulgence. Of course, because as a spiritual teacher you are dealing with students who are being brought along a path of awakening, the pitfall you would run into most often is people still clinging to that transcendental escapism, so to speak. But, as you know, out there in the world at large, most people are addicted to the manifest finite domain.

A NEW RELIGION?

AC: Now, a direction I'd really like to explore with you, one I've been thinking about quite a lot lately, is: What would an evolved theism, appropriate for our times, look like? In other words, how would a new religion, founded upon authentic, radical, nondual realization, emerge in a postmodern cultural context?

Part of the background to this line of inquiry is that I've noticed that many of the people at the leading edge today, specifically those who are interested in spiritual development and the evolution of consciousness, seem to have outgrown many of the traditional religious paths, simply because those individuals have evolved to a higher stage of development than the one out of which the traditions originally emerged, in some cases, thousands of years ago. Many of the traditions are felt to be inherently limiting because of their often outmoded responses to the individual and collective needs of human beings who are at the leading edge as we move into the twenty-first century. Indeed, the traditions are no longer seen to represent a relevant path to freedom and unrestricted evolution, and therefore, many individuals have become interested in alternative approaches. But what often happens, for many of those people, is that the overarching context becomes blurred, and then being on the path almost always becomes a strictly personal matter.

What's very compelling is that I think we're coming to a point where, sooner or later, the higher potentials realized in the steps and leaps that these individuals are taking are going to require some kind of structure—a spiritual or religious structure, if we want to use that kind of language—to actually be able to embrace and organize the higher-level experiences they are having. It's possible we may need to give birth to a new tradition. In other words, we need to create a framework or context in which we can come together to make sense out of these experiences so that we can really use them as a foundation from which to restructure our whole relationship to the human experience.