KW: Yes, I think so. I think what you're talking about is a very important point. It's pretty common nowadays, and understandable, for people to say that there is a difference between being "religious" and being "spiritual." They say, "I am spiritual, but I'm not religious." And what they mean by that, of course, is that "spirituality" is not dogmatic or based on traditions—it's based on personal experience and personal understanding, and so on. But if that spirituality survives them, and other people can take up that spiritual approach, then it becomes a religion. Because all "religion" means is established, organized spirituality. So when people say, "Well, I don't like religion, but I am spiritual," all they mean is that they don't like organized forms of spirituality. But what they're really saying is that their own personal experience is all that counts. But what happens if they have a spiritual realization that's important, or they're part of a practicing sangha or community that has a realization that's important? If that's going to be passed on to subsequent generations, then it's going to be organized spirituality—and that's religion. They're going to have to create a religion, a structure in which to carry it on, to institutionalize it—

AC: God forbid!

KW: Most people don't like religion—they just have their own spiritual experience in this moment, and they don't think beyond that. But if that spiritual experience is going to have meaning to anybody other than their own ego, it's going to have to be carried forward. And that means it would be what I call a four-quadrant affair. [See diagram below.] That means it has to be anchored in the lower right quadrant (collective exterior) in terms of social institutions—structures that can actually carry it on. It has to have a lower left (collective interior) intersubjective worldview—a set of beliefs, interpretations, and understandings that indicate how you orient yourself toward these higher potential experiences that you're having. And of course, it also has to have the upper left (individual interior) and upper right (individual exterior) domains.




So when you say we may need a new religion, I'd say that it's happening right now, but it's happening in very small groups or practicing communities that are having these higher, what I would call third-tier spiritual experiences. But they have to bring them down, so to speak, and start to give them structure. They have to embody them, they have to institutionalize them, they have to find some way to reproduce them and carry them forward. However, that's only going to be happening in very small pockets of practice for the time being, in practicing sanghas—yours is an example, and there are also some terrific Buddhist communities and Taoist communities and Christian contemplative communities that all, in their own way, are attempting to embody higher potential states and trying to bring them down and give them structure so that they carry on. And that means creating a new religion.

BEYOND INDIVIDUALITY

AC: To take this further, it seems to me that this next step that we're speaking about points beyond individual enlightenment. It points way beyond the personal domain of the individual to the emergence of some kind of collective or intersubjective higher mind. I'm talking about a kind of emergence that would release an awakened consciousness whose source of power comes directly and miraculously from the merging of minds beyond individual and collective ego.

Of course, this is a challenging concept for us to grasp because those of us who come from the privileged classes all over the world, and especially in the West, have been brought up in a cultural climate where a kind of inauthentic ego-based autonomy is nurtured. And also, because the concept of enlightenment itself, up until very recently, has generally been very much about an individual journey. But this cult of individuality, I feel, is what we may all be called to transcend for the sake of the emergence of our own higher potentials. Obviously this would begin to occur in those focused contexts that we've been speaking about, but the implications for all of us are enormous. In terms of the evolution of consciousness, it seems to me that a higher level of development does point toward the emergence of a capacity of mind that literally transcends individuality.

KW: Oh, I think so. My own opinion, of course, is that every holon has four quadrants, so every awareness has an intersubjective component. But what happens in the higher waves, levels, or stages of development is that all of the quadrants, in a sense, become more vivid and vibrant, so you tend to notice them more. I mean, on the one hand, it's true that higher stages involve a sort of intensification of intersubjective consciousness. But on the other hand, paradoxically, the people experiencing that also become more autonomous.

AC: That's absolutely true.

KW: So it's not that autonomy is decreasing and intersubjectivity is increasing. I think they both just become much more vibrant, more noticeable. And in that sense, intersubjectivity does stand out in a way that it doesn't at earlier stages.

AC: Definitely, because in these higher stages, there would be a much greater degree of egolessness. And contrary to what most people may imagine, the natural result of a decrease in ego is always a greater and more authentic autonomy. And if this greater autonomy beyond ego begins to manifest in a number of individuals simultaneously, then the liberated mind of enlightenment itself automatically emerges through an awakened intersubjective context in a way that simply would not be possible through a singular individual.

KW: Yes, and also, that wouldn't be possible in earlier stages of development. Another way to put this is that, as you well know, what happens when you're getting into these more evolved spiritual states, the One Self becomes more and more obvious in others. So you can be sitting there looking at another person, and all of a sudden you experience an intimate oneness with their interior. And simultaneously they're looking back at you experiencing an intimate oneness with your interior because you're both resonating to the only Self there is in the entire universe. So intersubjectivity, so to speak, becomes a kind of harmonic resonance that just jumps out.

AC: And what if the kind of event that you just described became the foundation for the emergence of our own higher potentials? In other words, don't you think that in our future—assuming we survive and we're able to carry on with all this—there is going to be a level of development where the distinction between autonomous individuality and higher unity is going to become thinner and thinner?

KW: Definitely.

AC: And that through this greater nondual intimacy, unimaginable potentials—many of which you're beginning to have access to yourself, I think, through your own work—are going to begin to emerge—

KW: Yes. I think that's right. And I think that at a sort of rarified level, so to speak, even though a lot of the distinctions in the finite domain, the manifest domain, become clearer and simpler and more obvious, paradoxically, those distinctions all start to fade. They become kind of pale—and not just the distinction between self and others. You get this intersubjectivity that is constantly vibrating and vivid. For example, the traditional distinctions between masculine and feminine fade away as well. Agency and communion—it's hard to tell the difference. It's like you have both more communion and more agency at the same time.

AC: Right! Because when gender begins to identify more with the authentic self and less with ego, that singularity begins to emerge.

KW: But it's not a meltdown. That's what's interesting. In other words, you become both more masculine and more feminine—

AC: Exactly.

KW: And more autonomous and more group or intersubjectively oriented—transcending opposites in this very paradoxical way. I think that clearly happens. And it happens across the board.

AC: Yes. And what's so significant about this, I believe, is that what begins to emerge in this awakened context of nondual intersubjectivity is a completely new possibility—a different order of human potential altogether. I mean, it's literally like a new world emerges in this one, with new rules, because now the context has completely changed. It's the future, experienced now. It's a world or state of consciousness beyond ego, where together, as one, we can begin to consciously participate in the evolution of consciousness itself.

CREATIVE EVOLUTION

AC: You know, I've been intuiting for many years these kinds of higher evolutionary potentials that I had no objective evidence for. I simply saw them in the eye of my own intuition and found myself mysteriously compelled to do whatever I could to enable them to become manifest within my body of students. This was often disconcerting because when you see something that you're sure can exist, and indeed will if you try hard enough, but you continue to have no evidence to prove it, it can make you feel a little crazy. But finally, as a result of not giving up and continuing to exert tremendous pressure, these very potentials have actually begun to emerge.

I have found the things you've written about what you call a "post-metaphysical spirituality" to confirm my own experiences and also to enlighten my understanding of them. According to what I've understood, what I was seeing in the eye of my own intuition did not yet exist—not in the metaphysical sense of the perennial philosophy [Term used to refer to the common core of the world's great wisdom traditions], which holds that all higher levels are preexisting ontological structures. In fact, what I was seeing was only a potential, not yet an actual preexisting level that simply needed to be reached. Indeed, my own experience confirms your declaration that those newly emerging levels of consciousness/being have not yet appeared with enough consistency to become self-existing levels, or what you have called "Kosmic habits." But, and this is the most thrilling part of it, they do in fact become existing levels or Kosmic habits to the degree that we ourselves co-participate with consciousness to mutually develop that very capacity in ourselves.